Why is Labour so attached to Trident?

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Nuclear explosionBy Darrell Goodliffe

All of the leadership candidates have talked about the need to ‘move on’; mostly, they are talking about the Blair/Brown years. However, I think the problem goes back much further. I think the leadership has yet to move on from the 1980’s and is scared of anything that could even be possibly associated with that era. In the eighties unilateral nuclear disarmament was seen in the terms of ‘appeasement’ of the Soviet Union and Labour’s adoption of the cause gave rise to dark mutterings about our true commitment to defence of the realm.

Fast-forward to 2010 and the call for the end to wasteful spending on a pointless and dangerous bauble is not only rational but crucial to the defence of the realm. George Osborne and the Treasury have presented Liam Fox with a clear choice; either cut Trident or slash spending on conventional forces. Amazingly, it seems Fox will take the latter course. This is complete lunacy, to put it mildly, and a betrayal of British troops by putting vanity before their safety. I am sure the reader can remember endless questions from David Cameron to Gordon Brown about equipping troops in Afghanistan. Now, when given the choice, his government is choosing to sacrifice their needs on the altar of nuclear capability. No wonder generals line-up against the retention of Trident.

You would think Labour would have something to say on this but it really doesn’t at the moment. It is absolutely hamstrung by its past when it comes to adopting an attitude on defence that squares with modern realities. Blairism decided that the way to deal with issues like defence, crime and immigration where the Conservatives are perceived as strong was to pull on the hair-shirt and act and speak bluer than them rather than offering a fresh perspective. This has to change and Trident and our attitude to nuclear weapons would be a good place to start.

The true cost of Trident is something that is disputed with some estimates raising as high as £100 billion (and this is just the cost of actually replacing it without factoring in maintenance). According to a 2006 defence white paper the running costs of a replacement could run as high of 5-6% of the entire defence budget. Do those figures not boggle your mind? If you think it’s hard to justify in the damage done to conventional forces (and it is) what about the wider social cost of less money for the services we all want to see provided for the most needy in society?

We are told Trident is needed to ‘deter’ a nuclear strike. However, we all know that terrorists are not bound by geography, they are stateless, and there will be no early warning from any kind of ‘dirty bomb’ attack. So how does the deterrent argument make sense in that regard? With regard to other countries, do people honestly think that a country willing to inflict the devastation caused by a nuclear strike on another country would be deterred by the thought of retaliation? If they have truly reached that point then it is quite clear nothing would act as a deterrent. In reality, nuclear weapons were a system of control maintained by the ‘great powers’ over the smaller ones. However, it is a system control that is crumbling (with possibly catastrophic consequences) so even on that level it is becoming a total irrelevance and far from an asset to the nation’s defence an actual threat to the people of Britain.

Money that is about to chucked down the drain on Trident could be much better spent in other areas. In defence, it could help maintain our conventional forces (and perhaps deal with low pay in the lower ranks) and also be funnelled where it should be if we are serious about combating terrorism – good quality intelligence services. On a wider level it could perhaps be used to reverse the scrapping of the future jobs fund, the building schools for the future program or maintaining the extension of free school meals. Defending Trident is defending the indefensible. Labour must realise that the time for nuclear disarmament is now and it doing so arm itself with a clear critique of this government’s defence policy.

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