He tried North Korea last time, and everyone laughed. In the intervening week, Iran has changed completely.
So even David Cameron is now making only the "jobs" case for Trident.
He is like one of those 1960s miners' leaders who tried and failed to convince Harold Wilson and Tony Benn that certain pits had to be kept open even though there was no coal left in them, because they employed people.
Yet that is the only argument that a Conservative Prime Minister can still find for spending well north of a hundred billion pounds.
It is just as well for him that the Commons vote will be this year, and that before the Summer Recess.
Any later, and he would have been joined in the Aye Lobby by pretty much no one apart from the irreconcilable Corbyn-haters in the Labour Party.
Even the New Statesman had spotted what Peter Hitchens noticed-the capacity for a far cheaper alternative nuclear deterrent to Trident by switching our nuclear deterrent from the RN to the RAF.
ReplyDeleteThe NS noted back in 2015: ""Today, CentreForum has published a paper outlining how a simpler – and much less costly – system can provide the UK with a credible, minimum, independent nuclear deterrent.
It draws on the recently declassified government definition of minimum deterrence developed to deter the Soviets in the late Cold War.
Our proposal uses a British-built version of the new US B61-12 thermonuclear bomb being developed for NATO, delivered by the UK’s forthcoming F-35 Joint Strike Fighters operating from land bases and from the Royal Navy’s new carriers. The weapons would be based in existing facilities at RAF Marham, Norfolk and RAF Honington, Suffolk, removing all nuclear weapons from Scotland in the process.
Dual-role systems offer two clear advantages. First, the nuclear mission could free-ride on much of the capital and operating costs of the conventional forces. It would significantly reduce costs.
Second, a dual-role system is a clear step down the nuclear ladder in both cost and capability terms. This means that as and when the international climate allows for multilateral disarmament, the UK won’t waste the investment in the F-35 aircraft, which can continue to operate in their conventional role.""
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/02/there-cheaper-credible-alternative-trident
Indeed.
Peter Hitchens is absolutely right.
Why isn't this being explored, instead of a ridiculous debate designed purely to split the Labour Party?
You have answered your own question there. As on Syria, Cameron's only interest is in splitting the Labour Party.
DeleteHe obviously does not believe that there is a defensive case for nuclear weapons. He has never sought to advance a serious one, and he no longer bothers to mention any at all, however laughable.
Instead, he is using his position to repeat from a greater height the arguments made by certain trade unions and by their sponsored MPs. Give that a moment to sink in.