This is what happens when we leave our energy policy to private companies and to foreign states. Not that we cannot learn from abroad, of course. China will be using the coal ash from her coal-fired power stations to provide the uranium necessary for her nuclear power stations. There is a reason why some countries last and some don't. China has been China for five thousand years.
This perfectly beautiful programme has been developed in partnership with Canada, source of much of our uranium, which we also obtain largely from Namibia, and from Australia when the government isn't made up of the ecomaniacs who have, alas, taken over the ALP and disenfranchised its natural supporters. Who says that Commonwealth ties don't matter? The ruling faction of the ALP is as anti-monarchist as it is hostile to the proper jobs and the energy security that nuclear power provides.
Apparently, British coal is too high-quality to deliver uranium. Just as well that we have the Commonwealth, then. But the right sort of coal is abundant in Spain, Germany and Poland. Good luck to them. And good luck to the Japanese, who are looking into extracting uranium from seawater. Yes, seawater. Have we any of that? I think we have.
The last Government might have been wrong about everything else, but it was right about nuclear power, even if not about how to do it. And this Government may be wrong about everything else, but it is right about nuclear power, even if not (yet?) about how to do it. Quite apart from the fact that this island stands on vast reserves of coal, nuclear power, properly executed, would arguably be so cheap that it would not need to be metered.
Reverse privatisation. Renounce climate change hysteria. And restore the proper jobs that ground proper communities, the economic basis of paternal authority, the national sovereignty that is energy independence and public ownership, the binding of the Union that is public ownership, the Commonwealth ties on which our uranium supply depends, and the freedom to stay out of wars over other people's oil or gas.
All guaranteed by the State, since that is what it is for.
Yes, all right, I of all people should know that there is no point in hoping for either of the Whig, Gladstonian parties to sign up to this. So, Ed Miliband, over to you.
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God, I wish that you were in the Shadow Cabinet. But you are not even in the party, the party that you should be you/our Leader of. It is such a crying shame.
ReplyDeleteOh, well, Liam Byrne has resigned...
ReplyDeleteI was going to write that in your last sentence you may speak truer than you know. But then I remembered that we were talking about David Lindsay here. Of course you know.
ReplyDeleteLike everyone who matters and many of us who merely hang around them, I have been sent the call for papers for the fan book. There is no arguing with it, your last book is a "landmark" and the position set out in it is "generation-defining".
Ed Miliband is on the road to Downing Street. The last Blairites are leaving the Shadow Cabinet and probably Parliament. Some sort of role for the author of the postliberal generation's Bible or book of office is pretty much guaranteed.
That Call for Papers in full, which 23:34 is right to say has been sent to everyone who matters by a man whom I believe it is true to say that you have never met, which means that anyone who hasn't had it doesn't matter:
ReplyDelete“For half his lifetime, David Lindsay has been quietly formulating a generation’s alternative to neoliberal economic policy, unrestricted liberal social policy, neoconservative foreign policy, and the triumph of the 1970s sectarian Left and the 1980s sectarian Right on the supposedly centrist basis of the common position at which they have arrived since 1990. Britain’s nearest thing to an economically populist and socially conservative American Democrat, or to a Canadian Red Tory, or to an Australian disciple of Bob Santamaria, David Lindsay anticipated the British Red Tory and Blue Labour movements by at least a decade.
In February 2012, the publication of his Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory was a milestone in his articulation of the reclaimed traditions of patriotism and social conservatism on the British and wider Left; of the recovered Tory and wider conservative sceptical attitudes towards capitalism, consumerism, libertarianism, globalisation, American hegemony, uncritical Zionism, and kneejerk hostility to Russia, China, France, Germany, Iran and the Arab world; of the definition of the Conservative Party by successive Liberal takeovers of the Tory machine, now joined by organised and successful entryism on the part of the Far Left, Islamists, and Asian communalists; of the challenges to the standard accounts of Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill; of the importance of Jacobitism to the emergence of the American Republic, to Tory action against the slave trade, to Radical and Tory action against domestic social evils, to the creation of the Labour Movement, and to opposition to the Boer and First World Wars; of the conservative and Tory arguments against nuclear weapons and against Post Office privatisation; of an entirely new policy programme formed and informed by all of the foregoing, including a potentially crucial role for the Liberal Democrats if they were willing and able to exercise it; of the Catholic, left-wing and all-Ireland case for the Union; of the intellectual and cultural challenges posed by Judaism and Islam, with their implications both for the Middle East and for the West; of a radical reassessment of the nature of the American Republic and of British relations with it; and of the devastating answers to fashionable attacks on the Catholic Church.
In this volume, a wide range of figures engages both appreciatively and critically with that timely, challenging, generation-defining book and author.”
Some of us have known for many years that David Lindsay was the man to watch. Soon, everyone will know it. The people who most hate the fact already do know it. But they have not had this, so they obviously do not matter, not any more. They know that, too.
To which one would only add the words of those who endorsed the Bible and book of office of the postliberal generation:
ReplyDelete“David Lindsay has generated a brilliant reconciliation of the conflicting strains of the Labour Tradition and is worthy of the closest attention.” Dr Maurice Glasman, Lord Glasman of Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill; Senior Lecturer in Political Theory and Director of the Faith and Citizenship Programme, London Metropolitan University; founder of Blue Labour.
“This book is well researched, is full of facts and deals with contemporary and historical political and social issues. It comes from the left but it should also appeal to those who are concerned with and interested in the great issues and how they are dealt with by our political and other institutions. It is well worth reading.” David Stoddart, Lord Stoddart of Swindon; Labour MP for Swindon, 1970-1983; Government Whip, 1975-1978.
“Current orthodoxy – both in economic policy and right across the board – has so manifestly failed us that we desperately need some fresh thinking and a different way of looking at our problems. That is precisely what David Lindsay provides in this stimulating book.” Professor Bryan Gould, Labour MP for Southampton Test, 1974-1979; Labour MP for Dagenham, 1983-1994; Shadow Cabinet Member, 1986-1994; Leadership Candidate, 1992.
“Before Red Tory and Blue Labour there was David Lindsay. He was arguably the first to announce a postliberal politics of paradox, and to delve into the deep, unwritten British past in order to craft, theoretically, an alternative British and international future. It is high time that the singular and yet wholly pertinent writings of this County Durham Catholic Labour prophet receive a wider circulation.” Professor John Milbank, Professor in Religion, Politics and Ethics, University of Nottingham; now honoured with an organised smear campaign by Oliver Kamm.
“Parliamentary democracy was not invented in 1689. Banking was established by the Venetians, not the Dutch. Much in our history and development owes much to complex ideas and traditions, especially to Jacobitism. David Lindsay’s highly original book explains why and how.” Dr Eveline Cruickshanks, Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London; Chairman of the Jacobite Studies Trust.
“David Lindsay has written a provocative, informed, and idiosyncratic work that will intrigue those interested in the intersection of Christian social thought, populism, and Anglo-American politics.” Mark Stricherz, author of Why the Democrats are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People’s Party.
“An excellent College Tutor here at Collingwood.” Professor Joe Elliott AcSS, Principal of Collingwood College, Durham.
On that last point, Damian Thompson, Oliver Kamm, Vinnie McAviney, Jon Simons(?) and the Harry's Place mob owe you millions of pounds apiece and their own complete withdrawal from public life for ever.
As a faithful Murdoch courtier, Kamm will be going to prison soon enough, anyway.
ReplyDeleteHe can take his little protégé with him, but I wouldn't wish sharing a cell with Mabel on them. Three's a crowd.
On topic, please.
Yesterday's men versus tomorrow's, Mr Lindsay. But still convinced that they are the modernisers, 20 years on from New Times and Democratic Left and all the other stuff that only you ever talk about. Their sense of themselves is sad, but everyone's except your silence about their roots and aims is scandalous.
ReplyDelete