Over The Rainbow

Jeremy Vine had someone on from the Greens, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the SDLP, each setting out what his or her party's price would be for participation in the Rainbow Coalition. In the Green and Plaid Cymru cases, the interviewees were the Party Leaders.

Only the Green mentioned constitutional matters at all. In the other three cases, it was all - and I do mean all - about at least maintaining, and at least from Plaid Cymru about very substantially increasing, central government spending in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. The Rainbow Coalition may not now happen. Perhaps there was never any serious chance of it. But this affair has shown us the true character of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the SDLP.

Specifically, it has shown that character to be precisely as some of us have always said it to be. I am not saying that it is wrong for politicians to emphasise the protection of spending from which their constituents benefit. Very far from it. But anyone who really does believe in an independent Scotland, or in whatever "full national status for Wales" would mean in practice, or in a United Ireland, had better look elsewhere, as I cannot believe that any more than a handful of SNP, Plaid Cymru or SDLP voters do not understand implicitly.

Quite where United Ireland voters should look instead is altogether a different question, since Sinn Fein would have given exactly the same answer, as surely as would have done the DUP, or the Alliance Party, or Lady Sylvia Hermon, or possibly the UUP even now, as the UUP would certainly have done before it hooked up with David Cameron, the worst electoral decision that it has ever made.

We also saw the true character of the Greens, who gave the standard Polly Toynbee list constitutional changes, before mentioning environmental issues only when prompted by the interviewer. But what he then said was largely excellent: public transport, domestic food production, a strong manufacturing base; the right answers, even if to the wrong question.

We must not cede this ground to those who deny that the energy sources to be actively preferred by the State are those providing the high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs that secure the economic basis of paternal authority in the family and in the wider community, while also guaranteeing independence from Arab and other oil, and from Russian and other gas. So, nuclear power. And coal, not dole.

Nor must we cede that ground to those who would use climate change as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.