It’s crunch time on Trident for Miliband and his party | Nick Ritchie

Labour’s leader can break with Blairite and Tory nuclear business as usual – and show some real statesmanship

Right now there is a British Vanguard-class submarine on patrol somewhere in the Atlantic, primed to fire up to 40 highly accurate thermonuclear warheads mounted on intercontinental ballistic Trident missiles within days, or even hours, of the prime minister’s say so. Detonation of even a handful would cause catastrophic and indiscriminate nuclear violence the like of which humanity has yet to experience. It is one of four such submarines based at Faslane naval base in Scotland that enable the UK to have one permanently at sea in a posture called “continuous at-sea deterrence” (CASD).

In 2006 the Blair government gave the green light to a long, expensive and controversial process of replacing Trident with a like-for-like system, starting with the procurement of a new fleet of ballistic-missile submarines. A decision was needed because the oldest Trident submarine is due to retire in the early 2020s, and they take around 17 years to design, build and test. On entering coalition with the Conservatives in 2010, the Liberal Democrats, who have never accepted the case for a like-for-like replacement, negotiated agreement on a formal government study of alternatives. The Trident Alternatives Review was initiated in May 2011 and, after some delay, finally published on Tuesdayyesterday.

The Lib Dems have long argued that we no longer require a “Rolls-Royce” nuclear weapons system procured in the depths of the cold war to flatten Moscow – or, to use more diplomatic language, “hold at risk key centres of Soviet state power”. At a time of severe pressure on government spending, including the defence budget, it was surely right to question the logic of committing £25bn to a new fleet of submarines, warheads and, eventually, a new missile. But after Labour’s sojourn in the political wilderness in the 1980s when “unilateral nuclear disarmament” became a pejorative term, the Lib Dem leadership began instead to make the case for a middle way: a smaller, cheaper nuclear weapon system more in keeping with today’s geopolitical realities.

They initially championed the idea of arming our new Astute-class attack submarines with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles (they currently fire US conventionally armed Tomahawk cruise missiles). This, it turns out, would be quite expensive. Smaller, yes; cheaper, no. That’s because of the cost and time of developing a new warhead – 24 years according to the new review that looks at options involving the current Trident ballistic missile, a fleet of three or four new ballistic missile submarines, and a new nuclear cruise missile for submarines and aircraft. The review also sets out five different postures in which nuclear forces are held at different levels of readiness with different deployment patterns: continuous deterrence, focused deterrence, sustained deterrence, responsive deterrence and preserved deterrence. It argues that each provides a credible alternative to current policy.

As a result the Lib Dems look set to support a reduced version of …read more