Who's afraid of debating Trident?
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Version 0 of 1. The future of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system is “the most important issue facing this country”, Michael Fallon, the defence secretary, told the BBC after a scathing personal attack on Ed Miliband last week. Just as Miliband had stabbed his brother, David, in the back to get the Labour leadership, he was ready to “stab the UK in the back” over Trident to get into Downing Street, Fallon said. He described the Labour leader as “a man so desperate for power he is ready to barter away our nuclear deterrent in a backroom deal with the SNP [Scottish National party]”. Asked at a Royal United Services Institute event the next day if he regretted his comments, Fallon replied: “Absolutely not. This is a general election taking place here. This is the rough and tumble of politics …” Fallon’s intervention was criticised across the political spectrum, not least by former top brass, the vast majority of whom say they support the renewal of Trident. “This is not a time for politics to get in the way of facts or what is in our vital national interests,” General (now Lord) David Richards, former chief of the defence staff, told me. Admiral Lord West, the former head of the navy and Labour security minister, sayd Trident “needs to be dragged out of the political arena – it’s too important for the nation”. General Sir Mike Jackson, the former head of the army, said Trident’s future should not be embroiled in party politics: “Britain’s strategic future ought not to be a party political matter.” It is all very curious. When in office, Britain’s top brass argued that they could not comment on the country’s nuclear weapons because it was an entirely “political” matter, ie did not relate to the practical realities of military conflict. (The one exception is the current first sea lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas, who has been allowed by the government to publicly and enthusiastically support Trident’s renewal.) British military chiefs and defence policymakers do not want to stimulate a debate about Trident that might challenge outdated assumptions that it is needed to maintain the UK’s status in the world, or that it is a credible deterrent. Fallon’s outburst was all the more extraordinary since the support for a new fleet of Trident submarines supplying “continuous at sea deterrent” (CASD) is one thing on which the Labour and the Conservative leaderships agree. (Labour’s manifesto confirms this, though it leaves the way open for a three- rather than four-submarine Trident fleet, and a reduction in the number of nuclear warheads for a “mimimum, credible, independent nuclear capability”.) There are divisions in Labour’s ranks. A significant Labour rebellion in the last parliamentary vote on Trident, in March 2007, meant the Blair government had to rely on the votes of Tory MPs. Asked whether a post-election Labour government would renew Trident “on the back of Tory votes”, Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, did not answer the question when interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on 9 April. However, the near certainty of a large majority of the combined votes of Labour and Conservative MPs in favour of Trident renewal makes both Nicola Sturgeon’s insistence that the SNP’s opposition to Trident is non-negotiable, and Fallon’s outburst against Miliband, pretty much meaningless. The Liberal Democrats are not convinced about Trident – as part of the 2010 coalition deal, they managed to delay a final decision on Trident’s future until 2016. Sir Nick Harvey, the former Lib Dem defence minister, has restated his opposition to a like-for-like replacement for Trident, where a fleet of new submarines is estimated to cost £20bn and the whole system £100bn over 30 years. “Becoming a nuclear adversary takes a combination of capability and intent,” he wrote in Liberal Democrat Voice. “And while Russia has the capability to strike us with a nuclear weapon, dropping a bomb on us tomorrow would be way wide of [President Vladimir] Putin’s strategic intent and would have utterly catastrophic consequences for Russia itself.” Harvey added: “The real gamble with the nation’s security is making a currently purposeless weapon a financial priority.” A new Trident fleet of ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons are estimated by independent analysts to take up about a third of Britain’s military equipment budget over the next decade. Harvey accused Labour and the Conservatives of “prioritising the impressive feat of kicking around the country’s most expensive political football, rather than participating in a rational conversation about whether the assumptions upon which like-for-like replacement rests are logical or relevant to the threats Britain faces today.” Perversely, it seems this hugely important issue cannot be debated seriously in a general election campaign. |