It seemed better to spend a small amount on them early rather than to lock them up later at enormous cost

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It seemed better to spend a small amount on them early, rather than to lock them up later at enormous cost.. Before climate change forced its way on to the mainstream political agenda, nuclear energy was in decline - hounded by environmentalists and rejected by the City. Then, all of a sudden it was presented as a solution to the greatest threat we face, and the nuclear share price began to soar. According to supporters, nuclear is reliable, sustainable, indigenous, immediately available and, most importantly, carbon neutral. It is the answer therefore not only to the looming energy crisis, but to climate change itself.

Not surprisingly, environmentalists have been under pressure to put aside their traditional hostility. The threat of climate change, even according to conservative predictions, outweighs the worst of nuclear power. So if it were genuinely the case that nuclear power represents a solution to climate change, there's no question we'd have to embrace it.. Sound the alarm! Ring that old liberal tocsin! The British National Party is coming! And - guess what? - it is all Tony Blair's fault. He has abandoned the Labour Party's working-class base for the fickle swingers of Middle (class) England. What, therefore, could be more logical for the most disadvantaged white parts of the working class, their patience exhausted, than to turn to the one form of protest voting that will put the wind up their bleeding-heart do-gooding masters? It is a knee-jerk thesis eagerly adopted by Blair-bashers. There are many Labour people who think that the party's focus on centre-ground politics has freed the white working class to flirt dangerously with racism Their analysis is wrong.

Labour is, in fact, the party that takes the interests of the working class more seriously than any other - and Labour voters remain the least likely to defect to the BNP. Let us pause, first, to deconstruct the latest panic over the electoral rise of the far right, one of many convulsions over the years. This one was started by Margaret Hodge, the Work and Pensions minister and MP for the outer east London seat of Barking, where the BNP won 17 per cent of the vote in last year's general election. She said that most of the people in her constituency whom she canvassed for next month's local elections told her that they would consider voting BNP this time.Why would she give Labour's opponents the benefit of such free publicity? Because, one suspects, she was embarrassed by the BNP's success last year. There were mutterings at Labour headquarters that the local MP should bear some responsibility. The Guardian quoted "one senior Labour figure" as saying: "It is a question of leadership. They have to take the fight to their opponent." Well, Hodge reads The Guardian and her response can be understood if not perhaps condoned.

She launched a pre-emptive strike to prevent unnamed party "figures" from saying, on 5 May, that disastrous BNP gains in Barking were all her fault for being so passively complacent. Instead, she will be on television saying: "I tried to warn you."The second part of the deconstruction is to point out that the BNP tends to steal votes not from Labour but from the Conservatives. Friday's YouGov poll suggested that a week's free publicity had lifted the BNP's rating from 0.4 per cent last month to 7 per cent. This gain came more at the expense of the Conservatives, down three points, than Labour or the Liberal Democrats, down one point each.These are not, then, natural Labour working-class voters, but rather the naturally Tory working class. Psephologically, the BNP is the blue-collar wing of the same tendency as the UK Independence Party.

It is unfair, of course, to bracket UKIP with the BNP: UKIP is more plausible in its rejection of racism, but both parties are fishing for the same right-wing voters who, if they vote for a mainstream party at all, tend to vote Tory. Perhaps Hodge was not merely engaged in self-defence, but in a stealthy attack. By raising the BNP's profile, Labour might siphon off votes from David Cameron's resurgent Conservatives.But let no one accuse Labour of mere negativism. After the synthetic fuss over the party's "Dave the Chameleon" broadcast, one of the least personal and lightest-hearted attacks in the history of political advertising, it is only fair to point out that New Labour has positive policies too for holding on to its working-class support.