Skipper

The question of whether Britain should acquire nuclear weapons was not formally discussed in Cabinet; Attlee just decided, with advisers, that on commonsense grounds, it was just the kind of weapon a country like Britain needed. Since then we have been stuck with them and their spiralling costs. We had the our veryown Blue Streak missile in the fifties, eventually cancelled for taking too long to fuel up and being too vulnerable to a possible first strike. Then we invested hope in the US Sky-Bolt project which would have complemented our air strike ability but that was rendered obsolete by US submarine launched Polaris missiles so we were persuaded to buy into those instead. Things went quiet for a while until Trident came on stream as the more modern version and so we bought into that as well.

Now we're up to the modernized version of Trident itself and as a result of assiduous and importunate researching by the Lib Dems we learn that total costs, including annual running costs, will exceed the expected £25bn by twice as much again over a 30 year period. Critics question why we need such a weapons system when: its raison d'etre, the USSR, no longer exists; we could not use it in any case without US agreement; and this is not a measure designed to encourage other nations to eschew the tempting option of developing nuclear weapons.

However, in his Mansion House speech in June Gordon Brown indicated-but only in an aside, not in the body of his speech- that he favoured renewal. There is to be no debate, if the government under Blair or Brown, can help it. The reasons for this are that: being nuclear is seen as a demonstrating virility internationally; buying Trident keeps us fast with the good old USA; and it's seen as providing a last ditch insurance policy in case some newly nuclear nation tries to intimidate us. In other words, the original reason why Attlee acquired them still obtains, in defiance of reason it seems to me. But Labour leaders may not have it all their own way at the coming Manchester conference. Nuclear weaponry is still an emotive issue within the Labour Party and on 5th September Charles Clarke demanded that such issues should be debated properly within the party and not dealt with merely by leadership fiat.