LIB DEM financial spokesman Vince Cable is down in Newport later this week, and the press were invited yesterday to meet him in the town, writes Clive Betts from the Assembly press gallery.
On being asked whether the UK party’s biggest financial noise will also be travelling to St Athan, Kirsty Williams, the party’s Welsh leader pointedly refused to answer.
The reference was of course to Mr Cable’s proposal to axe the giant military training “academy” which the UK government is planning to set up at the RAF base to undertake the entire gamut of military training.
The interest this morning from the press was because Mr Cable put the idea forward without having had any discussions beforehand with the Welsh party.
While defence policy is indeed reserved to London, any scheme such as this has massive ramifications throughout so many spheres of government. After all, the Cardiff government is planning to build all sorts of new roads, plus possibly a new railway station at St Athan – there used to be one there, but it didn’t get reopened when passenger trains returned to the line quite recently.
What is interesting about the few words said at today’s press briefing was that we still don’t know what are the Lib Dem plans for St Athan.
The truth is probably that they don’t have any plans, and that Cable’s “policy” was a faux pas or just a whistle in the wind.
This was a chance to lay a bogy. But the Lib Dems didn’t take it.
The comparison with the Conservative briefing which had only just finished was massive. Mr Melding spoke at length about policy on devolution – the Tories don’t possess a clear one. But that didn’t stop him talking about it, as well as giving the reasoning on which Tory decisions will be based.
And not just to give his personal views. But to go as far as he could towards explaining the situation.
It’s a pity that Kirsty – faced with the same sort of problem – didn’t do the same.
PS Mr Cable’s in Newport in connection with an expansion of the Admiral insurance navy in that town.
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Fair enough. But what Vince Cable has said about this privatised war academy is being said by all three UK parties. The project is up for grabs. BBC Wales reports a revised, i.e. further-delayed project plan this month, anyway.
It has already had to have a £45 million public subsidy to get planning consent, etc. The local jobs are a myth. The multi-nationals owning it would provide diluted training for the UK military (hardly popular) and look for contracts with dodgy governments all over the world.
The ‘permanent war’ party which promised this also gave us the Dragon Project there, remember. What was it after spending all that public money; 35 jobs? Bet somebody had nice consultancy fees.