Today is the deadline for bids to takeover British Energy, the country's beleaguered nuclear operator. Leading the pack of foreign companies hoping to get their hands on BE's nuclear sites is the French government owned Electricité de France, or EDF as they prefer to be known on this side of the Channel.

Now, EDF is hoping to bag large tranches of UK land at nuclear sites - not for BE's financial integrity or for operational performance, but to add the UK to its nuclear catalogue. Put simply, they reckon building a new reactor on British soil will pull punters into their atomic showroom.

This week, Gordon Brown and the French President Nicholas Sarkozy, will sign up to an entente atomique and herald in a new era of cross channel cooperation.

The pact will be announced later this week at the "Arsenal summit" held at the Emirates stadium, the nominal home of French exiles and sportsmen alike, where Brown will open the proverbial front door to French utility Electricity de France (EDF), and its burgeoning workforce, to come build and operate any new nuclear power stations here in the UK.
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It really doesn't come as any surprise to learn that, whilst Gordon Brown's government were claiming to be having an honest and open conversation about the future of nuclear power with the British public, secret deals had already been done in Whitehall which would pave the way for a new fleet of reactors.

At the weekend, the Independent on Sunday revealed that, whilst the first nuclear consultation (which was slammed by the High Court for being flawed, misleading and inadequate) was underway, Brown's energy adviser Geoffrey Norris held at least nine secret meetings at Number 10 with the bosses of nuclear energy companies such as EDF, Eon and BNFL.

It looks like the government's nuclear ambitions have been dealt yet another major body blow. This time it's all about the thorny, intractable issue of nuclear waste.

Just as yet another nuclear-related consultation comes to an end, this time on where to store the UK's highly toxic atomic legacy, the government has been warned that it would be "wrong", and possibly even illegal, to use Sellafield in West Cumbria as a site for long term nuclear waste disposal. David Smythe, emeritus professor of geophysics at the University of Glasgow and a nuclear waste expert, said ministers should have ruled out Sellafield - home to the nation's most enthusiastic nuclear partisans and the long-assumed front runner in the race to house a waste dump – years ago after spending hundreds of millions of pounds on research that proved the area was geologically unsuitable to be a store for radioactive waste. Professor Smythe said, "there is clear evidence, after the expenditure of some £400m, mostly directed to the Sellafield area, that West Cumbria possesses no suitable rocks in which to site such a repository".

Dear, oh dear, oh dear. Who would have guessed it? Gordon Brown's public consultation on nuclear power is being fixed by his favourite market research company who has been charged with carrying out the polling? And the sad thing is that it all sounds so familiar.

Not so long ago, when he accepted the role to lead this country, he said that he wanted to ring in a new era of politics – to listen to the British people. He boldly stated that the "best way of drawing up policies will not be discussions in government departments, but listening and learning – and involving and engaging the voices" of you and I. He wanted to build "trust in our democracy" by embracing a "more open form of dialogue for citizens and politicians to genuinely debate problems and solutions". And, as those words still echo through Westminster, the truth is that this government is no different from the one that was so badly tarnished with dodgy dossiers and spin.