Ministers should be hailing it as a major vote of confidence in the economy. King Charles should be clearing his diary to make sure he is available for the opening ceremony. And the broadcasters should be leading the news with it. In normal circumstances, you might expect the announcement that two major global corporations will headquarter their new €7 billion joint venture in the UK to be greeted as a huge win for the country.

It may not be popular with the green elite, but it is a lot more likely to be successful

The trouble is, the Renault joint-venture with China’s Geely has been designed to produce petrol and hybrid engines and not fashionable battery powered cars.

But hold on. With the rest of the world pouring vast subsidies into electric vehicles, spending money the UK cannot hope to compete with, it is increasingly obvious that the UK should make a big bet on petrol. It may not be popular with the green elite, but it is a lot more likely to be successful.

It is a rare piece of good news for the battered British economy, and its beleaguered car industry. The French giant Renault and the emerging Chinese automaker Geely want to manufacture these engines to supply to brands such as Volvo and Nissan. While EVs are taking an increasing slice of the market, the logic is that petrol will still have a big role to play, and there will be plenty of space for engines that still burn some fossil fuels, and preferably as little as possible, with minimal emissions. And they have decided to headquarter the new company in the UK.

If our political leaders were smart enough, they would jump on that. We hear a lot about how the UK is not competitive in electric vehicles. There are endless demands for more subsidies for battery plants and factories. The trouble is, it is hopeless. The United States is spending hundreds of billions of dollars in making itself a global leader in EVs, the EU is trying to match that spending, and now China is rapidly making inroads into the market with its own low-cost vehicles (most of them so good and so cheap we will all be driving them quite soon). For the UK, with an almost bankrupt government, and representing just 3.2 per cent of global GDP, to possibly think it can compete with this is, to put it mildly, completely batty.

Instead, it would be far better to accept that the internal combustion engine is likely to have a role in moving people and stuff around the place for quite a long time yet. Indeed, with questions emerging about whether EVs are genuinely better for the environment – given all the minerals extracted to make them and their relatively short life – it is increasingly open to debate whether they are really the answer to combating climate change. They may turn out to be a massive and expensive mistake. The UK should make a big bet on petrol, making itself a hub for a reinvented petrol engine, with Renault-Geely as a start. Right now it is likely to have the market to itself – and it might well be able to build a significant new industry.