Tag Archives: nuclear weapons

Caron Lindsay

Conference controversy guaranteed – Renewal of Trident to be debated

By Caron Lindsay | Sun 12th July 2015 - 10:30 am

Full details of the agenda for Autumn Conference will be released in due course, but reports on social media say that a motion calling for Trident not to be renewed at all will be debated.

If passed, this would mean an end to a succession of fudges on the issue in recent, and not so recent, years.

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Posted in Conference and News | Also tagged , , and | 42 Comments
NewsHound

LibLink: Danny Alexander: A like-for-like Trident replacement isn’t justifiable in terms of security or cost

By NewsHound | Wed 2nd July 2014 - 8:55 am

110301-N-7237C-009Danny Alexander has written for the Guardian in response to yesterday’s Trident Commission report. He continues to make the case that the policy passed at Liberal Democrat Conference last September, which cut the number of submarines was the right one for two reasons.

First of all, we don’t need continuous at sea deterrence because the nature of the world has changed:

During the cold war, there was a credible threat of a surprise massive attack against this country or Nato allies. Our nuclear forces needed to be available within minutes in order to give credibility to our policy of deterrence. This is why we maintained continuous at-sea deterrence; we kept at least one armed submarine on patrol 24/7, 365 days of the year. But the Berlin Wall has been down now for 25 years and the threat of “state on state” attack is much reduced.

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , and | 19 Comments
Nick Harvey

Nick Harvey MP writes… Robert Gates poses stark defence question to UK: Do we want to be a real military partner or a nuclear power and nothing else?

By Nick Harvey | Thu 16th January 2014 - 1:58 pm

Former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates was on Radio 4’s Today programme this morning decrying the UK’s defence cuts. He said the squeeze meant the UK could no longer be a ‘full spectrum’ military partner of the US, acknowledging that our relationship with the US has been fundamentally altered.

A sceptic would quickly dismiss the comments of a man currently promoting his memoirs, but Gates makes a wider point about what exactly we want to be doing with a smaller defence capability.

Both Labour and the Tories continue to cling to the idea that we should maintain a full-scale Cold War …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 31 Comments
Stephen Tall

Scrap Trident nuclear weapons, urge 58% of Lib Dem members

By Stephen Tall | Thu 8th August 2013 - 9:45 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum  to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. More than 600 party members have responded, and we’re publishing the full results.

58% say scrap Trident, just 26% back leadership line of reduced deterrent

Currently the Trident system has FOUR nuclear armed submarines. This means that at least one nuclear armed submarine can always be on patrol, even if others are undergoing maintenance or training, and therefore the country has a continuous nuclear deterrent. One way of having a less expensive nuclear …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged , and | 24 Comments
The Voice

Nick Clegg’s Letter from the Leader: “Trident: we need to protect ourselves from the threats of the future not the past”

By The Voice | Sat 20th July 2013 - 2:55 pm

libdem letter from nick clegg

Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system, divides opinion. That was apparent this week when the Government published the results of a two-year, detailed study of the alternatives.

Some people say Britain should surrender our nuclear weapons tomorrow, regardless of what threats we face. While others seem to believe it’s unpatriotic to even consider anything other than the full-scale Trident system we built for the Cold War threats of yesterday.

Personally, I think the world has changed. I am not, and never have been, a believer in unilateral disarmament. But I

…

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Gareth Jones

Opinion: Thoughts on Trident alternatives

By Gareth Jones | Fri 19th July 2013 - 1:54 pm

The much awaited Trident alternatives report is out; and, within the given parameters, its quite a good one. The party should be happy it forced the MOD to publicly review its nuclear deterrent for the first time.

However, the revelation that ballistic missiles are superior to cruise missiles for nuclear deterrent is not really a revelation for even laypersons like myself, and the debate is really about replacing the V class nuclear submarines which carry Trident rather than the missile itself. Retaining the Trident system, which we already operate, would always be a cheaper option than a

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 12 Comments
Shirley Williams

Baroness Shirley Williams writes… Trident review is a remarkable accomplishment for the Liberal Democrats

By Shirley Williams | Wed 17th July 2013 - 8:01 pm

The Trident Alternatives Review is a highly informed and detailed study of the effectiveness, sustainability and cost of this country’s nuclear deterrent. Trident has been based on a rota of four submarines which between them ensure that there is always one nuclear-armed submarine at sea every hour of the day and every day of the year, a deterrent that is undoubtedly expensive but also, as the Review points out, ”as close as each system can get to an assured second strike capacity”.  Trident was developed in close co-operation with the United States and in that sense is not, unlike the …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 21 Comments
Stephen Tall

Trident: the Grand Old Lib Dems have lost this war already

By Stephen Tall | Wed 17th July 2013 - 9:30 am

110301-N-7237C-009Yesterday the Lib Dems published The Trident Alternatives Review. According to Danny Alexander, “it is the most thorough review of nuclear systems and postures the UK has ever made public. It is ground-breaking – thanks to the Liberal Democrats and our insistence that Trident alternatives must be examined.” That may be: but this is a war the party will not win.

Here’s the party’s sound-bite version of the policy:

We oppose the like-for-like replacement of Trident. We believe there is a ‘nuclear ladder’ of capabilities. Alternative systems or postures could bring

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 61 Comments
Caron Lindsay

No, Nicola, a vote against independence is not a vote for Trident

By Caron Lindsay | Thu 11th July 2013 - 11:51 am

Writing blog posts based on the tail end of a radio interview you have caught  is fraught with danger. However, I want to take issue with something Scottish Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.

She had been asked about today’s Guardian story which suggests that the Trident base at Faslane could be designated UK territory in a way similar to the sovereign military bases in Cyprus for a temporary period post independence.

She said that if the UK Government wanted to keep weapons of mass destruction, it could do so, but Scotland would just have voted against Trident, for independence.

On the ballot …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 3 Comments
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