At 7:42 p.m. tonight, the lights went out across London's West End. But this was no dramatic blackout orchestrated by some shadowy cyber-terrorist. This was a mundane, predictable failure of the national grid. The lights simply flickered, died, and left the theatre district in darkness. As the FTSE 250 dips again, this incident serves as a grim reminder: when the government fails to keep the lights on, the market takes notice.

Let us count the costs. For every minute the Palace Theatre is dark, that is lost revenue, lost ticket sales, lost tax receipts. The ripple effect through the local economy is significant. Restaurants, bars, hotels: all empty at a time when the economy can ill afford it. The yield on the 10-year gilt has ticked up three basis points since the news broke. Investors are pricing in a new risk: infrastructure failure as a credible threat to business continuity.

This is not a one-off. It is the predictable result of years of under-investment in grid capacity. The government spent billions on energy price caps, but nothing on the transmission lines that bring power to the stage. The market sees through such fiscal folly. Capital flight looms. Already, I am hearing murmurs from fund managers about shifting allocations to Swiss utilities.

Central bank policy offers no solution. The Bank of England cannot print new transformers. It cannot repair a failed substation with interest rate cuts. The only cure is fiscal discipline: prioritising maintenance over handouts. Until then, every blackout is a vote of no confidence in the state's ability to provide the basic infrastructure of a modern economy.

Audiences are being evacuated. Theatres are cancelling performances. But the real tragedy is the erosion of trust in the system that underpins all commerce. The bottom line: when the grid fails, the market suffers. And make no mistake, the market will remember.