A Big Early Start?

Today's gigantic hike in electricity bills is a direct consequence of the destruction of the British coal industry, as celebrated by Boris Johnson in what there is no evidence whatever that he intended as a joke. 

In Britain, even quite heavy electricity use could be free, with only nominal charges above that level of consumption. If we had publicly owned pits, coal-fired power stations, and nuclear power stations, around which would be built everything else in a publicly owned, all-of-the-above energy policy. Quite literally, in fact, since turbines are made out of steel, which requires coal.

And the publicly owned, all-of-the-above energy policy would be the basis of the publicly owned, all-of-the-above transport policy, again with massively expanded public transport free at the point of use. We could easily afford all of this. But instead, we ignore our thousand years' worth of coal, preferring to import oil and gas from the ends of the earth, even though we have to fight endless wars over those resources, allying ourselves to regimes, notably in Saudi Arabia, that take our money and use it to fund terrorism on our streets. Funny how the wars are never unaffordable.

Privatisation is a racket. The same product, via the same pipes or wires, cannot possibly cost different amounts from different companies. Never mind from the same company, but on different tariffs. Nor can national sovereignty and national security be secured while the commanding heights of the economy are themselves commanded by foreign interests and even by foreign states.

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, "Do regret the defeat of the miners in 1985?" If not, then I can give you chapter and verse as to why you do not really regret the loss of any of things that you claim to, although you might sincerely believe that you do.

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. Next up, her milk-snatching as a pioneering strike against the wicked dairy industry. Don't laugh, it could happen.

Also no laughing matter is the fact that the Labour Leadership is so bad that, far from Johnson's remarks having placed his party in any danger of losing the coalfield seats that it won in 2019, its number of such seats is still going to double in 2024, as is its majority in each of those seats which it already held. That will be more than enough to offset the Conservatives' loss of scores of old Thatcherite strongholds to the Liberal Democrats, the party that had to have left the Cabinet for the energy cap to stop being "Marxist" and become government policy.

Free of Thatcher's Single Market, itself so beloved on the Lib Dems and their voters, the Conservatives could then get on with their already begun programme of renationalising steel companies, which in turn cannot function without a coal industry. We got none of that from Old New Labour. We would get none of that from New New Labour, either.