Taking a step backwards

Tweet It was disappointing, although hardly surprising, to see that Plaid have watered down the party’s opposition to the building of new nuclear power stations in the election manifesto.  I don’t actually know whether Plaid has changed its policy on nuclear energy; I only know that the policy appearing in its General Election manifesto isn’t the one that the party held when I was involved.  Perhaps it has been formally changed with the consent and involvement of the members; perhaps those writing the manifesto have simply decided to ignore the formal policy in favour of a rather more honest statement of the party’s position.  But “We continue to oppose the building of nuclear power plants in new locations” is a step back from opposition to any new nuclear build, which was the party’s formal position until very recently.

It is, of course, more honest than claiming to oppose something which a number of the party’s candidates and elected members are actually campaigning for (although it’s still not as honest as stating the party’s actual de facto policy on energy, which is that individual elected members and candidates are free to take any stance they like).  Gareth Hughes was rather less than entirely kind to me in his report on the last Plaid conference which I attended in 2010, when he reported that I had suggested that Plaid was in danger of opposing nuclear power stations only on those sites where no-one wanted to build them.  My comment was intended as a criticism, not as a suggestion for future policy; but since, as far as I am aware, no-one is suggesting that any new nuclear power stations should be built in entirely new locations, it now seems to have become formal party policy.

Does it matter?  At one level, then of course, the question of how Wales meets its needs for electricity is a mere question of detail; it’s not a core nationalist issue.  And a party which first and foremost seeks support for independence could probably avoid having definitive policies on a whole range of issues.  (Although there is a question to be answered about its impact on the asset and liability balance sheet if independence is ever achieved.)

But that isn’t the stance which Plaid has taken.  And in an election where it has clearly been attempting to promulgate the message that there’s no need to vote for the Green Party in Wales because Plaid is already filling that slot, the absence of a coherent energy policy makes that claim untenable.  In addition, building a new nuclear station in Wales renders much of the renewable capacity which the party’s manifesto also claims to support irrelevant other than as a means of exporting electricity; it has nothing to do with meeting Wales’ needs.

And the biggest hole of all in the resulting policy is that on nuclear waste.  Nobody supporting the building of new nuclear power stations can, with any honesty or credibility, oppose the siting of the waste storage and treatment facilities which are an inevitable concomitant.