But Because It Is Hard

Hundreds of millions of people live in abject poverty in India, so why should it go to the Moon? As a sovereign state with its own free floating, fiat currency, India has as much of that currency as it chooses to issue to itself, but why spend it on this?

Welcome to the Anthropocene. Life is the geological force that shapes the Earth, and the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere, not least by the uniquely human phenomenon of economic growth, so that human mastery of nuclear processes is beginning to create resources through the transmutation of elements, enabling us, among other things, to explore space and to exploit the resources of the Solar System. Vladimir Vernadsky and Krafft Ehricke will yet have their day. They may be having it now.

“To increase the power of Man over Nature, and to abolish the power of Man over Man,” said Trotsky. “Dominion,” says the God of the Bible. Dominion over the beasts, thus over the land, and thus over everything on and under the land. Dominion over the fish, thus over the waters, and thus over everything in and under the waters. And dominion over the birds, thus over the sky, and thus over everything in the sky, as far up as the sky goes, and the sky goes up a very long way. That dominion is entrusted so that we might “be fruitful and multiply”. Entrusted as it is to the whole human race, its purpose is, “To increase the power of Man over Nature, and to abolish the power of Man over Man.”

The United States Space Force will do important work in research and development, work such as probably only the United States could do, or at least coordinate. But space is being both privatised and militarised, and that by the country that does not recognise it as a common resource for all humanity. There needs to be a return to President Eisenhower’s proposal, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on 22nd September 1960, for the principles of the Antarctic Treaty to be extended to Outer Space.

Then we might begin to exercise dominion that has been entrusted to us, as a species, over the birds, thus over the sky, and thus over everything in the sky, as far up as the sky goes. Exercise that dominion in order to “be fruitful and multiply”. Exercise that dominion, “To increase the power of Man over Nature, and to abolish the power of Man over Man.”

Having said all of that, we do need the specification in the Statute Law that the United Kingdom’s aid to any given country be reduced by the exact cost of any space programme, or of any nuclear weapons programme, or of any nuclear submarine programme, or of any foreign aid budget of that country's own, but with the money thus saved remaining within what we are once again going to have to patronise the world by calling the Overseas Aid budget, and with the 0.7 per cent target still resolutely intact.

And 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.

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.