Labour’s Nuclear Moment

Not content with both standing exposed as wholly owned subsidiaries of a rapidly collapsing criminal corporation, the Conservative Party and the SNP are both on the brink of organisational and electoral collapse due to their espousal of a definition of legal marriage other than the union of one man and one woman.

Labour promises nothing more than a free vote, and will do so on nothing more than a Private Member’s Bill as any sort of manifesto commitment, because it depends so heavily at all times on local Catholic and Muslim machines, and when in office on the good will, however grudging, of newspapers that are not The Guardian. Those papers now have the option of UKIP in order to kick the Conservatives from time to time. The Muslim machines now have the option of Respect. Or, based on regular developments around the country, of any other party that they might happen to fancy taking over.

In which vein, whereas Derek Hatton or Tommy Sheridan has come and gone, the Catholic machines that still dominate political life in, especially, the North West of England and the West of Scotland are as potentially promiscuous as they were in the days when they engineered the secession of most of Liverpool’s MPs to the nascent SDP. Or when they ensured that Roy Jenkins lost Warrington but Shirley Williams won Crosby. Or when they replaced Jenkins with a pro-life Catholic as the first ever Labour MP for Glasgow Hillhead, so that the Great Man was reduced to a mere casualty of the decline of Orangeism, a phenomenon of which he probably knew almost nothing.

Or when they ensured that even Eric Heffer was succeeded by Peter Kilfoyle. Or when they kept David Alton in for years on end. Or when they peremptorily gifted Crewe to a Conservative and the East End of Glasgow to a Nationalist, at the height of New Labour’s bioethical breakdown, no part of which has been reversed in the slightest by this Government. Or when they successfully insisted that Labour break its own rules and select a Catholic from an all-women shortlist for the constituency containing old Irish Consett, old Recusant Esh, and Ushaw College. Otherwise, their low level organised  vote-splitting would have handed North West Durham to the Lib Dems. Just to make the point that it could. In 2010.

These places are not as Catholic as they used to be? Perhaps not. But active political life in them is. People who withdraw, withdraw from the lot. No one makes them. They just seem to prefer it that way. The only ever alternative either in the North West of England or in the West of Scotland was the Orange Order, hardly a power now. (Similarly, the foremen at the heavily Catholic Consett steelworks were almost always Protestants because the unwritten rule was that they had to be Freemasons, while Methodism was of course hugely mighty in the pit villages. But neither the Masons nor the Methodists are now anything like what they once were. In the Esh and Ushaw corner of the Lord’s Vineyard, it was and it sometimes still is about the Masons within the Catholic Church within the Labour Party, but that is a whole other story...) If anything, the focus of any parallel structure is now either the mosque or the black church, also within the Labour Party. Which of those, or for that matter which Orange Lodge, is particularly sympathetic to the redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples?

Anyway, not content with driving away its members and voters in droves upon droves over this issue (the North of Scotland is now for the taking, what with the SNP and the Lib Dems), the SNP is also sleepwalking towards a very heavy defeat in the independence referendum. And in the meantime, it is about to sell out its long-held position on nuclear weapons, with even Jim Sillars now reviving the old vocabulary of NATO’s unsinkable aircraft carrier, only now applied to Scotland rather than to Britain. This is surely Labour’s moment, to declare that it will eschew colossally expensive prestige projects left over from the Cold War, and instead divert the money, in part to the likes of real aircraft carriers and to such trivia as boots and tanks, but mostly to the real nuclear deterrent, which is civil nuclear power.

At the Durham Miners’ Gala, Ed Miliband told one hundred thousand people, plus the television cameras, that he was going to reopen the mines. Like the coal on which this island very largely stands, nuclear power is absolutely vital to defending our sovereignty, not least by keeping us out of wars that ought not to concern us, while cementing the Union and while securing the high-wage, high-skilled, high-status male employment that is the economic basis of paternal authority in the family and in the wider community.

Nuclear-generated electricity would be so cheap that it might not even need to be metered. But there is absolutely no need for the price to be paid in increased electricity bills in the short term. 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 do not. China has been China for five thousand years.

This perfectly beautiful programme has been developed in partnership with Canada, the source of much of our uranium, which we also obtain largely from Namibia, and from Australia when the government is not made up of the ecomaniacs who have, alas, taken over the Australian Labor Party and disenfranchised its natural supporters. Who says that Commonwealth ties no longer 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. That makes sense. 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? Yes, we have. 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.

Our society needs to reassert paternal authority, and thus require paternal responsibility. That authority and responsibility require an economic basis such as only the State can ever guarantee, and such as only the State can very often deliver. And that basis is high-wage, high-skilled, high-status employment. All aspects of public policy must take account of this urgent social and cultural need.

Not least, that includes energy policy: the energy sources to be 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. Nuclear power. And coal, not dole.

Ed Miliband, over to you.