SURPRISING no one, the UK Government pulled the plug on the long-promised Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon project on Monday, once again leaving Wales feeling very much like the poor cousin of the UK.

It seems Westminster can happily find more than £55 billion for HS2, almost £15 billion for the Crossrail project, or £14 billion for a new runway at Heathrow, but £1.3 billion for a green energy scheme which would put Swansea, Wales, and the UK as a whole on the map as a world leader in renewable energy is completely beyond them.

It says a lot that even the Welsh Conservatives have been critical of the decision, calling it "desperately depressing" and "a risk worth taking" - a rare case of the group breaking ranks from its Westminster colleagues, although perhaps this is an element of revenge after leader Andrew RT Davies was criticised by Tory ministers last week after suggesting Airbus had exaggerated how many UK jobs could be lost as a result of a no-deal Brexit.

Swansea and communities further west are well within their rights to feel particularly aggrieved, with this week's decision coming less than a year after it was announced electrification of the rail line to Cardiff had been scrapped.

It's almost like a Conservative-run government doesn't care about the area which never votes for them.

For its part, the UK Government has said the overall cost of the project would not represent value for money, which is a deeply short-sighted view of the scheme.

Yes, as the first project of its kind anywhere in the world it probably would have cost a fair chunk of cash. From a commercial standpoint, which, lest we forget, is very much the Conservatives' wheelhouse, the price the company in control of the lagoon would have charged for energy may have been a little bit more than the government would have liked to pay, but as a world-first project there is an argument this would have been justifiable.

Wales could have been host to a new form of energy generation which could have become the norm across the globe.

Instead we get short shrift. Again.

So is this the end of the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon? Maybe not.

One suggestion I've heard bandied about is the Welsh Government could take the £1.4 billion it has stashed away for the M4 relief road - which I'm hearing from some very reputable sources is likely to be thrown in the bin in the coming months - and build the lagoon itself.

This would be quite the middle finger to Westminster - and politically a very attractive prospect to a number of sections of the Assembly.

And with Plaid Cymru presenting a motion of no confidence in Welsh secretary Alun Cairns in the Assembly later today it seems AMs have rarely been more united in opposition to their counterparts in London.

While such a vote from the Assembly has absolutely zero bearing on the UK Government, it would send a fairly blunt message over the Severn estuary.

Mr Cairns' job is to represent Wales' interests in Parliament, so the devolved government of the very country he's supposed to be standing up for saying they don't have faith in him to do so would be quite the kick in the teeth - but one some would argue is very much justified.

As is always the case with these things, while the lagoon itself may be dead - although a Walking Dead-esque return is not entirely out of the question - its spectre will haunt Welsh politics for some time to come.

So far in the past 12 months we've lost the Circuit of Wales and the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon. Will the M4 be next? Watch this space.