He means that a publically built monopoly rarely benefits from privatization. Because the efficiency gains will largely be extracted by the private owners.

there was also an (ideology motivated) sabotage, where EDF is forced to sell at a loss to private competitors who produce nothing, who then will turn around and sell to customers at a cheaper price than EDF. So they can claim that private is obviously better.

It’s all a house of cards anyway, as the “alternative providers” who were supposed to provide all that magical agile goodness through the wonders of competition fold one after the other and are actively pushing their customers to EDF.

That’s cargo cult economics: someone said competition was good so we’re going to have all the appearances of it without giving up on our large publicly-funded infrastructure. Because at the end of the day we need electricity and all these rent seekers are only good at extracting value from existing installations. Utterly disgusting.

That's what I call Potemkin Markets. You see that everywhere, enabling insiders to engage in legal risk free looting but claiming it's okay because you sprinkled magic free market pixie dust on it.