A hectic week on questions of peace and war. Monday saw the publication of the government’s new National Security Strategy and Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015.
Trident replacement hit the headlines as the Review included the news that the manufacturing cost of the four replacement submarines is now expected to be £41 billion rather than £25 billion. They put this as £31 billion plus a £10 billion contingency which, on past record, means they’ll be spending £41 billion. Irritatingly, the whole section on Trident is entitled ‘The nuclear deterrent’. They may call it that, in their ideologically-loaded, fanciful, non-provable fashion, but it’s still a nuclear weapon.
Interestingly, former Labour Defence Secretary Lord Des Browne - who helped Blair push the first step towards Trident replacement through Parliament in 2007 – made an important observation. He pointed out that cyber attack could render Trident obsolete. And industry experts agreed that "any national public or private infrastructure service or defence facility" could be hacked. Disturbing stuff. The fact is, this is a twentieth century system and it looks and acts like one. When those subs were first built they were undetectable under water so enemies never knew where they were. How can that possibly be the case in the twenty-first century? What about under-water drones? I suggest this is old times technology, and updating it is not going to offset these huge security risks.
The particularly interesting item was the updated National Security Risk Assessment, published at the end of the document. I had been wondering whether this would be altered to elevate nuclear attack to a tier one threat, given the exaggerated rhetoric about the supposed Russian threat. But no, there it is, still residing cosily at tier two. What amazes me is how the Risk Assessment isn’t so far off the mark, as things are currently – tier one again includes cyber, public health, natural hazards, terrorism and so on. But then the SDSR commits to maintaining and replacing Trident, without question, when other key areas such as cyber, are clearly underfunded. One just has to point out the lack of joined up thinking.
Tuesday saw the Opposition Day motion put forward by the SNP, “That this House believes that Trident should not be renewed”. Opposition Day motions are non-binding and generally overlooked, but on this occasion, given the fact that Trident is high up the political agenda, it received quite a bit of coverage. It was rejected by 330 to 64. Labour MPs were asked to abstain. There has been some criticism of this position by Labour, and we are aware that there are some suggestions that Jeremy Corbyn has changed his position but this is absolutely not the case. The situation is that Labour is undergoing a policy review on Trident, from which the outcome may be a change to an anti-Trident position. Asking or compelling MPs to publicly state a position on Trident at the start of a democratic internal party discussion would not be conducive to an atmosphere in which people feel open enough to change their minds. It would be likely to reinforce divisions.
Then on Thursday we were exposed to Cameron’s determination to go to war on Syria. In my opinion, case not remotely proven. Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition is to be applauded. With three failed wars with disastrous consequences in 14 years, why on earth would anyone think that doing the same thing again would have a better outcome? We need to stop this war happening.
If you can support a local protest this weekend, or lobby your MP to vote against, please do so urgently.