Rolls-Royce first briefed this paper on the terrific potential of its small modular reactors (SMRs) – based on turbines which drive Britain's nuclear submarines – almost a decade ago. 

The company kept the dream alive through the pandemic, despite lukewarm support in Whitehall. 

As government stalled, the UK's leading edge has been eroded and overseas competitors – US-owned Holtec, GE Hitachi and Canada's Westinghouse (owned in Britain until Gordon Brown sold it in 2009 for £3.4billion) – moved into the vacuum.

When Keir Starmer unveiled Great British Energy amid fanfare last year, nuclear was the missing element. The assumption was that Energy Secretary Ed Miliband was less than enamoured. 

With British growth stalling and the current nuclear plants exhausted and running on a wing and a prayer, Starmer is seeking to unlock the jam. 

As part of his love-in with infrastructure, the Prime Minister is vowing to 'rip up the rules' and grant planning licences for a new generation of reactors. 

This in addition to the £35billion super-reactor coming to fruition at Hinkley in Somerset and preparatory work on the still-not-fully-approved Sizewell C plant in Suffolk. 

In common with most of Labour's growth announcements, there is little precision on whether Rolls-Royce finally will get the go-ahead. 

Whitehall insists on continuing an open auction process rather than supporting our leading engineer. 

Rolls-Royce reckoned it could deliver mini reactors, providing some 470 megawatts of power, at cost of £2.5billion (for each of the early units) in 2021. 

The go-slow has ceded advantage to North American rivals. They are lining up to build SMRs to power the data centres needed for AI and beyond. 

Planning permission in the UK is a start but getting behind the licences and giving Rolls-Royce, British engineering and jobs a leg-up ought to be a no-brainer. 

Drug store 

What Britain really needs, as it seeks to escape from stagnation, is more fast growth companies such as AstraZeneca. 

A decade ago, when it fought off a takeover by Pfizer, the Anglo-Swedish group with a French chief executive, Pascal Soriot, was worth £60billion. 

It is now the UK's largest company – bigger than Shell – worth £173billion, and has reported a stonking 26 per cent rise in profits to £6.95billion. 

Yet this is the firm which a blinkered Government declined to support adequately in building a £450million vaccine facility on Merseyside. 

It is as if Downing Street has taken a bite out of US politician Robert Kennedy Jnr's much-derided anti-vaccine cookie. 

The shadow over the Astra share price has been uncertainty about its burgeoning China operation, which is worth 12 per cent of annual sales of £43billion. 

Investors have now been assured that this will be no more than a blip. An investigation into £720,000 of unpaid taxes is likely to result in penalties of just £3.6million. 

Astra may lack a weight-loss drug but is not short of heft. It has no less than 24 compounds, in critical cancer and heart medicines, classified as blockbusters with a value of $1bn or more of annual revenues. 

In the pipeline are nine more drugs, which are at a late-stage development. The complaint about its results is that it failed to upgrade its 2030 forecast of revenues of £65billion by 2030. 

Given the strength of the pipeline and emphasis on investment in the vast US market there is no reason to think that it is going ex-growth just yet. 

What Astra demonstrates, as did GSK this week, is that Britain has a future as a life sciences champion. We saw that in the pandemic. 

What it needs is a Government which understands that nurturing a research and private enterprise culture is more important than tipping billions into an unreformed NHS. 

Howzat! 

We read endlessly about how billionaires made the Premier League the most valuable football enterprise in the world. Now they are coming for cricket. 

Indian investors are taking aim at England's 'Hundred' franchises and the English and Wales Cricket Board has sold its 49 per cent holdings in the teams for £800million.

Happy days! But much murmuring in the Pavilion at Lord's.