Great British Energy, Indeed

As a member of Unite, I am sorry to see the party to which it is inexplicably still affiliated attack the oil and gas industries in terms worthy of the Conservatives, who have been the party of Net Zero for 40 years. My favourite question of Greens is, “Do you regret the defeat of the miners in 1985?” It always stops them in their tracks. And I have the same question for post-Thatcherite culture warriors and opponents of Net Zero, “Do you regret the defeat of the miners in 1985?” If not, then I can give you chapter and verse as to why you did not really regret the loss of any of things that you claim to, although you might sincerely believe that you did. At local elections in England, Green gains, often considerable, are largely from the Conservatives.

Although she began to blather on about environmentalism as a means of Socialist control once she had the dementia that also turned her into a born again Eurosceptic, Margaret Thatcher was very Green indeed as Prime Minister, shocking first the Royal Society, and then the United Nations General Assembly, with her passion on the subject. Theresa May gave the nation the Climate Change Act, and her erstwhile Chief of Staff is about to take over Matt Hancock’s seat. Boris Johnson described Thatcher’s destruction of the British coal industry as “a big early start” towards Net Zero. Her milk-snatching is now held up as a pioneering strike against the wicked dairy industry, as I had been predicting for donkey’s years.

Instead of this, let us harness the power of the State, and deliver an all-of-the-above energy policy based around civil nuclear power and this country’s vast reserves of coal. Around those twin poles of nuclear power and of the clean coal technology in which Britain was the world leader until the defeat of the Miners’ Strike, let there be oil, gas, lithium, wind, solar, tidal, and everything else, bathing this country in heat and light. This is why we have a State.

Fracking? There is no problem with any energy source in principle, but none of that shale gas has turned up yet, and if it is anywhere, then it is in heavily populated areas that could do without the earthquakes, the poisoned water, and all the rest of it. Say it again, harness the power of the State to bathe this country in heat and light from oil, gas, nuclear, wind, wave, tidal, solar, and that without which there could also be no steel for rigs, pipelines, power stations or turbines, namely coal. Britain stands on one thousand years’ worth of coal, and was the world leader in clean coal technology until the defeat of the miners in 1985. Do not vote for anyone who will not say that the miners were right.

When I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

The Workers Party of Britain is not contesting North Durham, so I am, and matters are now too far advanced for me to stand aside for that party, or for Laura Pidcock as is rumoured without a word from her, or for a Palestinian as is also being mooted, or for anyone else. Unless the Workers Party had come up with a candidate by Sunday, then the fact that I was always going to contest this Election had been in the public domain for five years. I am not standing against Akehurst. He is standing against me. The Workers Party would be standing against me. Laura would be standing against me. A Palestinian would be standing against me. Anyone would be standing against me. Please contact davidaslindsay@hotmail.com, including if you might be able to help with money. But I will be on that ballot paper, come what may.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. We have made a start.