Louise Gilmour: We need more leaders who are willing to utter the most offensive word in politics

It may not be the most offensive word that springs to mind when considering our political leaders but, to them at least, U-turn is the worst.

Kissing babies? No problem. Pot-shotting opponents? Sure thing. Admitting a cherished policy is not, after all, a work of political genius but a piece of junk? Dream on.

Spinning 180 degrees not only highlights backfiring legislation, politicians fear, but exposes a weakness, a willingness to cave under criticism. Their concern is understandable but misplaced because our country needs more policy-makers willing to heed concern, acknowledge mistakes, reverse, and repair the damage.

Like so many things still shaping our politics today, Margaret Thatcher did the damage when famously insisting: “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.” It was malarkey, of course – the lady turned when she had to – but it cemented the notion that U-turns are for faint-hearts and fearties.

Margaret Thatcher telling the Tory party conference in Brighton in 1980 that she was ‘not for turning’ – politicians have been desperate to avoid U-turn accusations ever since.

Coincidentally, our union’s annual congress last week was in Brighton, where Thatcher delivered her big line to the Tory conference in 1980. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, fresh from her own U-turn on winter fuel payments for pensioners, was with us on Tuesday to announce a huge investment in nuclear power.

The UK Government plans to spend £14 billion on a new plant at Sizewell C, in Suffolk, creating a baseload of safe, clean and secure energy and thousands of skilled, well-paid, unionised jobs. A huge investment with huge benefits, for energy, for jobs, for communities. For England.

Here? The sound of silence. Or rather the sound of First Minister John Swinney harrumphing before insisting that new nuclear energy will never, ever get a green light from the SNP.

No, Scottish ministers will continue to pursue renewables, continue promising a greener tomorrow, and will, according to research from Robert Gordon University, continue doing so while 200 jobs are lost in our oil and gas industries every week for the next five years.

The UK and Scottish governments’ failure to effectively support an offshore sector that is on the brink must change too, of course, and escalating speculation suggests the scale and speed of the looming jobs catastrophe, offshore and in supply chains, is pushing ministers to reconsider.

Well, that and Nigel Farage promising that if they don’t, he will.

That rethink cannot happen soon enough but, meanwhile, the SNP’s refusal to even consider nuclear energy’s potential is an abdication of responsibility. It makes no sense if ministers want to achieve net-zero targets and it makes no sense if they want Scotland’s economy to grow again.

This, of course, is the same government that recently refused to support an industry-leading welding school on Clydeside because skills learned there will help build nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Navy.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves.

Ministers explained, with straight faces, that while they understood the need for Britain’s armed forces, they could not, in good conscience, arm them. They oppose nuclear weapons too, of course, while promising an independent Scotland will join Nato, a nuclear alliance.

John Healey, the UK defence secretary, said the refusal to support young Rolls-Royce welders on the Clyde was not the decision of a serious government and compared it to student union politics. He was being unfair to the students.

On defence spending and nuclear energy, the Scottish Government seems happy to burnish its principles while shunning the opportunity to reboot our industrial capability, defend our country, secure our energy and create thousands of good jobs for our children and our children’s children.

Politicians with principles are to be welcomed (and encouraged to breed) but as the economist John Maynard Keynes almost said, when the facts change, principles should change too.

Well, the facts have changed, in Washington, in Moscow, on defence spending, and on nuclear power. It is time for the Scottish Government’s ban on nuclear, its pearl-clutching queasiness over defence, and its apparent disdain for creating skilled, secure jobs to change too.

You turn if you want to but, in Edinburgh, ministers must.

Louise Gilmour is GMB Scotland secretary