I have believed for a long time that we don’t want nuclear weapons, we can’t afford them, and they weaken our moral authority to persuade other people not to obtain them. I proposed the emergency motion on this which we passed last year.
So how do I feel after today’s statement on the Initial Gate for Trident replacement?
Disappointed – but also encouraged and heartened by what we have achieved. Nick Harvey, our Minister, has helped to secure a 25% reduction in the overall number of warheads, and cost reductions to ease the financial burden. But this is not enough to satisfy our main aims.
The problem with achieving our goals is the other parties. We cannot win a fight on nuclear replacement against both of them!
The Tories seem to have an ideological attachment to rockets and the ability to blow other people up. But you might think Labour would be better. However, it was Labour who pushed through the programme for a new nuclear deterrent in 2007 (against Lib Dem opposition), and whose policy is currently explicitly pro-nuclear weapons. I look forward to someone from Labour trying to explain to me how it is progressive to spend billions of pounds on military weaponry whose purpose is to kill very large numbers of civilians!
So what have we managed to do, despite being massively outnumbered?
We have managed to delay the final decision – the key vote – until after the next General Election. This means that there is an opportunity for Labour to reconsider their position, even if that is too much to ask of the Tories. And it also means that this can become an election issue. Those who want to spend £100 billion over the lifetime of the replacement will have to explain to the voters why this is a higher priority for them than schools, hospitals, reducing the national debt, reducing student fees, paying soldiers better, supporting our conventional armed forces or almost anything else! Polls show clearly that there is lower support for Trident replacement in the country than in Parliament, so maybe we’ll be able to correct that imbalance.
And we have won a key concession, taken out of the coalition agreement. ‘Liberal Democrats will continue to make the case for alternatives.’ Thanks to Nick Harvey’s work, it was announced today that there will be a formal government study into alternatives to fullscale replacement. I still think that the best alternative is no weapons, but if we can persuade the other parties – or at least one other – to accept a smaller scale replacement, that is at least progress. This will be easier with an official government study to back it up.
If we are to convince people across the political spectrum that we don’t need to keep fighting the Cold War, so that we win the final vote on this in 2016, we must work even harder – starting today!
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19 Comments
What about Pakistan? North Korea? China even?
The Cold War may be over but you could easily construct the same arguments used then about mutual assured destruction with reference to modern day geopolitics.
g I whole heartedly agree with you. Mutually Assured Destruction is actually a rather sane way of preventing wars, we saw in the first and second world wars how even without nuclear weapons we can wage horrendously deadly and destructive wars, yet the advent of Nuclear Weapons has finally seen the stakes raised to the point where we cannot afford to play.
“I look forward to someone from Labour trying to explain to me how it is progressive to spend billions of pounds on military weaponry whose purpose is to kill very large numbers of civilians!”
As the Lib Dem concession is to look for alternatives, and any alternative would be billions (albeit hopefully less than trident) then surely someone from the Lib Dems is going to have to explain the same thing. The ability to kill 100 million is no greater or lesser an argument than the ability to kill 10 milion. I fail to see why a joint NATO deterrent could not fill the needs of Britain, France and the US and reduce costs for all three.
An important addition to the arguments is that having nuclear weapons makes you a target for the nuclear weapons of others. This doesn’t just apply to our own nuclear weapons, but allowing others (primarily the USA in our case) to station, store or transit nuclear weapons in our territory. It could be argued that the presence of american air bases on which the USA may be storing nuclear weapons and bases used for targeting and guidance of its nuclear arsenal on our soil acts to make mainland UK a target in a much more significant way than our own at-sea nuclear deterrent.
We don’t need any nuclear weapons. At best they’re a waste of money, at worst horrific tools of mass murder.
But if Labour and the Conservatives insist on Trident, will they at least back concrete moves towards multilateral nuclear disarmament; moves such as – and this is LD policy – supporting a Nuclear Weapons Convention?
And it was only the other day that Liam Fox was calling for a weakening commitment to our international obligations on international aid. Now we know what he would rather spend the money on.
It is ridiculous to spend billions of pounds on Trident replacement for many reasons, and the state of the public finances is certainly one of them.
The day that Labour abandons its commitment to Trident or similar form of nuclear defence system is the day that I will tear up my Labour Membership Card and vote for the Tories. If anything defines the Liberal Demcrats as dangerously naieve Panglossian Polyannas it is their obsession with making this country defenceless. I know from the experience of being led by the unilaterist Michael Foot that it was political suicide to suggest getting rid of our nuclear deterrent (And that’s what it is, a deterrent) Labour’s nuclear disarmament policy kept us out of power for years. If you continue on this path your oblivion is guaranteed. The thumbs down you got on AV will seem like a vote of confidence by comparison.
MacK – nuclear weapons aren’t a “defence” so getting rid of them can’t render the country defenceless. They’re a deterrent – which is to say, they work by the threat of terrorism on a massive scale. They’ll continue to seem like a good idea until the day they are used in earnest – and then those who are left will wonder why the hell we could ever have believed that we could have these things forever and never use them.
Of course, Pakistan , north Korea, soon Iran then the rest of the middle east have nuclear weapons. What better time for us to get rid of them
Hmmm so the coalition government has agreed to spend 3 billion quid on the start of a new generation of nuclear weapons, and the subs to carry them (with another 100 billion quid to follow), what on earth happened to Lib Dem policy, and manifesto commitments.
Personally I think the party has become a disgrace, and I feel dirty from voting Lib Dem. There are some issues that are important enough to break the coalition, and to stand by ones principles. This to my mind was one of them.
Nuclear weapons are pointless, and irrelevant in the modern security age. They are expensive in a time of economic austerity, and as weapons of mass destruction they are illegal and abhorent.
keep nukes, they are a 100 percent guarentee against anyone practicing industrial war against britain again, and allow britain to remain smaller conventional forces than our comparable neighbours, as has always been our wont.
“The Tories seem to have an ideological attachment to rockets and the ability to blow other people up. ”
Good to see the spirit of coalition is alive and well – new politics indeed.
Let’s remember that the Liberal Democrat manifesto doesn’t propose unilateral nuclear disarmament, just alternatives to the current system of arms that we have.
“In the bipolar world of the Cold War, with a stable nonsuicidal adversary, deterrence could work. Deterrence does not work against people who ache for heaven. It does not work against undeterrables. And it does not work against undetectables: nonsuicidal enemy regimes that might attack through clandestine means–a suitcase nuke or anonymously delivered anthrax.” Charles Krauthammer
I agree with MacK, have you all forgot Michael Foot? Some of the younger members may not be familiar but for goodness sake, not only did he get hammered at the election, it was policies such as getting rid of nuclear weapons that led to the SDP being formed who later merged with the Liberals.
This really isn’t good news if we are to have a party by the next election. We are already being called out for being soft on our morals and worse than that, I fear that this news will further whittle our support in traditional lib dem strongholds. I personally think that we need to fight tooth and nail to stop this blatant waste of public finances. Nukes don’t work on terrorists and even if they did, I hardly feel that we would use than, to do so would make us more of a outcast nation than the US were when they devastated Japan.
It’s not the time to say “well it could have been worse”, we are seen as a week pushover party in the eyes of the right, this is not in any way a good position to fight for anything. I’m sick of having to justify our pushover compromises to our voting supporters.
If I recall, we did not have any gibberish about keeping our existing system in our manifesto or the collation agreement, how, if this passes, do I even begin to sell this to the voters that last time voted Lib Dem?
If we don’t express our differences and fight for what we believe in, how are we to become anything more than 3rd rate contenders. We made a big deal about changing politics, but here is something that the v
bleeding computer! week is supposed to be weak, naturally. but here is something that many consider old dirty politics.
As ever, Greenpeace have this spot on. From the Guardian:
I frankly don’t know whether the UK ever needed an independent nuclear deterrent – or how truly independent it was. If it was really needed we had to have it, regardless of cost.
But those who remind us of the spectre of Michael Foot and Labour’s 1983 disaster forget 3 points. Firstly, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict which – however unfairly – greatly boosted the Tories. Second, the fact that other parts of Labour’s suicidal 1983 manifesto made the party unelectable, even without the “no nukes” pledge. Third – that was 1983 and this is now. Opinion polls suggest that many people – quite rightly – understand that the world has changed. Yes the threat is still very much there – but there’s no longer a huge Soviet stockpile pointing at us.
I don’t understand the argument that nukes enable us to have smaller conventional forces. Those conventional forces are clearly too small. We musn’t pretend that scrapping nukes will save pots of money – the Army and RAF are in some peril, and as for aircraft carriers without aircraft…….I wonder what the Tories would have said if a Labour government had trodden this path?
The clue to this debate, which is only about an *independent* deterrent lies in the fact that we are members of NATO.
We are already defended against attack by any source by the joint nuclear umbrella of NATO.
So a country like the Netherlands, Spain or Turkey, is as safe as we are from nuclear attack from elsewhere.
If it were otherwise there would be no point in being a member.
I would love to know how we would be safe from a nuclear attack on only France . It’s a bit like the objection to our own nuclear power stations. France, for instance, just 20 miles away is festooned with them.
No man is an island and islands are not islands any more..