British Volt, Indeed

That site at Blyth is very attractive, with a keen workforce already round about. Anyone looking to set up a factory should snap it up. But we should never have left the manufacture of electric car batteries to a private company such as Britishvolt, any more than we should be leaving our space programme to Virgin.

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.

We are heading for a hung Parliament. 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.