Time To Jump Ship

Polly Toynbee writes:

A small mushroom cloud of indignation greeted Philip Hammond's nuclear announcement on his first trip to Faslane. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg accused the defence secretary of "jumping the gun" with a pre-emptive £350m announcement that his party will thunder ahead with a like-for-like replacement for Trident. As a coalition review of possible alternatives reports in January, why this poke in the eye? Lib Dems protested convincingly at this provocative political positioning to appease the Tory right.

But for all the radioactive language, this hard blue dividing line doesn't displease their coalition partners. Why would it? Both sides yearn for separate identities – and with the final decision kicked beyond the election to 2016, both can safely posture with no threat to the coalition.

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem president, says it is inconceivable his party would ever be "handcuffed to Trident". He tells me, "We are making this an election issue for 2015", boasting that "we have already prevented a vast amount of money being wasted on it in this parliament." Nick Clegg said yesterday that he would prevent the spending of "billions and billions and billions of pounds on a nuclear missile system designed with the sole strategic purpose of flattening Moscow at the press of a button".

All who opine from every party speak solemnly of the need to make the right decision on Britain's defence for the next 50 years. Believe not a word of it: they are all thinking of the election in two and a half years. The Lib Dems will be pleased to be the least pro-nuclear party, hoping to woo anti-war votes they won from Labour over Iraq, but lost over coalescing with Tories. The Tories are happy to defend repeating a defence system designed in the early 1960s, because that's where their supporters are.

Alex Salmond will be smiling too. If Philip Hammond thought he was sending a missile into the SNP campaign for the 2014 referendum, he blew it. The Labour side of the "Better together" campaign says there are many fruitful defence issues that might swing the debate away from independence: could Scots still join the British army and should they join Nato? But instead Hammond chose the one question Salmond feels is on his winning ground – ridding Scotland of nuclear weapons.

So we know where everyone stands – except Labour. Deep policy thought is in progress. Ask, and it all depends who you talk to. Some in Labour are nuclear-heads because they occupy seats such as John Woodcock's Barrow, a one-industry town dependent on defence. Others are nuclear out of strong conviction a unilateralist Labour would be dead at the polls. Probably no one in Labour actually believes we need a Trident replacement for national defence – only for political defence of Labour. The higher theology of nuclear weapons was always about face, status and politics.

In Tony Blair's autobiography, he admits his reasons for cleaving to Trident were essentially political. But others, around Ed Miliband, see the end of all those political certainties. What use is a cold-war deterrent against present terrorism? Do we want to keep punching above our weight, why and at what cost?

But these subtle existential national questions will be put through the mincer of election warfare. Sir Nick Harvey, on being evicted from the defence department, says the review he was supervising will suggest third ways, stretching existing systems out for far longer, or as he put it, keeping a nuclear deterrent in a cupboard for a rainy day.

He admits that the 2016 deadline is entirely artificial, a political convenience that has nothing to do with the state of rust on submarines. Harvey plainly hopes Labour will opt for a third-way approach too. But the Tories itch for the chance to mount a Kinnock-like attack on Red Ed, weak on defence. So which way will Labour jump on Trident?

Talking to someone alarmingly close to Labour decision-making, of pro-nuclear persuasion, you can still hear the mad old rationale for Trident, the need for continuous at-sea capability, the pretence we will be vulnerable unless a replacement is agreed by 2016. Alternatives are rapidly dismissed: land-based nukes would require a massively defended piece of land and that would cost more. So would an air-based system, with complex refuelling. So, yes, it's the new subs or nothing.

Or, they whisper, there might be a cheap option but if the UK designed one, that would cause terrifying proliferation among all the world's small wannabe nuclear countries. What? Did he really say that? Any discussion of nuclear weapons soon reaches a point where it becomes clear that those who get up too close have their brains irradiated with nuclear nonsense. We must not only have the deterrent, but it must be super-expensive to keep the market price too high for new contenders?

Another cross-party review of Trident is headed by former defence secretaries Malcolm Rifkind, Labour's Des Brown and Menzies Campbell. There is a chance here that new thinking might break the deadlock in British nuclear politics. A costing they commissioned says the full Trident price tag is £83.5bn – or £1.86bn a year until 2062.

Is Labour really going to sign up to that? Few who know his mind think Ed Miliband will, though he may have to reshuffle his cabinet to abandon Trident. Nothing about the nuclear debate has ever been real, except the money and the votes. If some cheaper unreality emerges – a bomb in a cupboard – Labour and Lib Dems should both seize it, turning on the Tories for the £3bn they will have wasted already.

How will defence play out at the election? Pollsters don't know, since the issue has been in the deep freeze for so long. All depends on how you ask the question, says Ipsos Mori's Ben Page: a while ago voters were evenly balanced for keeping Trident, but told the cost in hospitals and schools, people turned against it. Yet pride in historic power is strong too, and fears can be stirred. YouGov's Peter Kellner agrees that people are reluctant to let go of past glory. Much will depend on winning strong backers: to abandon Trident, Labour needs cover from ex-generals calling for boots not nukes, plus experts from thinktanks like Chatham House and Rusi denouncing archaic cold war weaponry.

But Kellner would warn the Tories too that they will need influential voices – not just the admirals – to convince voters new nuclear submarines are worth so much money at a time like this. Philip Hammond just fired the starting gun. We wait to see which way Labour jumps.