No, no, that can't be right. They can't trifle with our hopes like that. It is now more than two years since the Greater London Authority renewed its campaigning for lighter winter evenings – and last week we thought we had a stunning breakthrough.

The Government said it was "minded to support" a Bill put forward by a heroic Tory MP called Rebecca Harris, calling for British Summer Time to be in force all year. We all had the strong impression that the Cabinet had abandoned the inertia and spinelessness of the last 40 years, and was going to support Mrs Harris in her bid to save lives, expand the economy and cheer everyone up. Then I pick up my paper yesterday and I find that there has apparently been a U-turn.

It now turns out that the support of the Government entirely depends on the Scots. Unless Alex Salmond and his team agree that there should be another look at daylight saving, the whole thing is once again going to be slammed back into the bulging filing cabinet of projects that are commonsensical (like repatriating some powers from the EU) but just too politically difficult to pull off. According to a Downing Street source, the whole thing is now "dead in the water". Come on, folks. This isn't good enough.