Small steps and giant leaps

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During its conference, which starts tomorrow, the SNP is due to debate the issue of Trident and the removal of nuclear weapons from Scotland within three years after independence. There is little doubt that the party will reaffirm its opposition to allowing the weapons to remain on the territory of an independent Scotland. Amongst the ‘solutions’ apparently being considered by London is that if Scotland is ‘granted’ its independence, it will be on condition that part of the country is carved out and remains part of rUK (or Greater England to give it a more appropriate title) as some sort of ‘overseas possession’. The fact that anyone could even consider for a moment that independence is theirs to ‘grant’ or that they have some right to retain any part of Scotland that they choose demonstrates that, deep down, many of those in charge in London really do see Scotland (and by extension, Wales) as a possession rather than a partner.

One of Labour’s senior MSPs at Holyrood has attacked the SNP’s proposals, pointing out that moving weapons from Scotland to England (Wales, thankfully, having now been ruled out) does nothing for nuclear disarmament; the same number of weapons would still exist, just in a different location. She has a point, although it would be reasonable also to point out that her party’s position – leaving the weapons where they are – isn’t exactly a major step towards disarmament either. A more valid criticism of the SNP would be that, having reversed its previous policy on NATO a few years ago and decided that an SNP-led Scotland would join NATO after all, there is a degree of hypocrisy in being part of a nuclear-armed alliance with a collective policy of being ready to use nuclear weapons whilst refusing to have them stationed on its soil. That wouldn’t make Scotland unique, of course; there are plenty of other NATO members who neither possess nuclear weapons nor are willing to host them.

There are some serious questions to be asked about whether NATO really is a nuclear-armed alliance or not. Whilst three member states possess nuclear weapons, the French arsenal is excluded from the NATO command structure, and there have long been doubts as to whether the UK missiles (which are only leased from the US) could ever be launched without US agreement. In theory, ‘NATO’ could launch a nuclear strike, but in practice, any decision would be taken in Washington, not at NATO HQ. And NATO’s whole pretence of being a nuclear-armed alliance, as well as the concept of deterrence in mainland Europe, depends on an assumption that the US would be prepared to engage in all-out nuclear war in the event of an otherwise unstoppable incursion into another NATO member state. That is no more credible under Biden than it was under Trump. Whether such a debunking of NATO’s status as a nuclear alliance is enough ‘cover’ to excuse the SNP’s decision to join NATO is a matter of opinion. I don’t find it so, and remain deeply disappointed by the SNP’s move away from the sort of defence posture followed by the Republic of Ireland, which looks to me a far better model for an independent Scotland (or Wales).

Does that mean that the SNP’s stance on closure of the base at Faslane is little more than gesture politics, at the expense of Scottish jobs, as Labour’s Baillie suggests? I think not. Whilst I’d like to believe that being forced to build a new base in Greater England might encourage a future Greater England government to think again about whether and why it should retain nuclear weapons, I suspect that’s just a pipe dream on my part. There seems little prospect that they will ever abandon their delusions of power and greatness, and the need to wave their missiles around is fundamental to that. But there is nevertheless a sense in which Baillie is wrong. Whilst it’s true that a single decision by one small country like Scotland has little effect overall, disarmament is necessarily a step by step process, and some of those steps will be very small. Labour’s argument that Scotland should do nothing is tantamount to arguing that no country should do anything; it’s a recipe for making no progress at all. And to misquote Neil Armstrong, even if it’s a tiny step for the world, it’s a giant leap for Scotland; it’s the biggest single thing that they can do to promote the idea of ridding the world of the scourge of nuclear weapons. I’m sure that the SNP will get this one right this weekend.

Can Wales and Scotland choose the rule of law if England does not?

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The expected announcement later today that the UK will build on its reputation as a rogue state by increasing the number of nuclear warheads it holds highlights one of the problems with all the various proposals for ‘reforming’ the UK as an alternative to Scottish or Welsh independence. Both increasing the number of warheads and developing new types of warheads are directly contrary to international treaty obligations, but we live in a state which regards international treaties as being things which bind other countries, not this one. And all the proposals for reform or federalism start off by assuming that certain issues, always including ‘defence’, are UK-wide issues, not ones for the member states of the ‘federation’.

It means that none of the proposed alternatives would enable Wales and Scotland to sign up to, and comply with, existing international treaties unless England also renounces nuclear weapons. But with both the Tories and Labour committed to the retention and replacement of Trident, there is no realistic prospect of England doing that. Unless defence also becomes a matter for the individual member states of the union, Wales and Scotland are condemned to remain part of a nuclear-armed state and, in Scotland’s case, to host the submarines, missiles, and warheads. On the other hand, if defence were to be a matter for the individual nations, then there is very little left to justify the continuation of the union from the perspective of the authors of the various ‘federation’ type proposals.

Independence is the only way forward which allows the people of Wales and Scotland to choose to opt in to the international community and the rule of law – rejecting independence is a choice to continue as part of a rogue state, with its exceptionalist attitude that only ‘other’ people are bound by any rules. The federalists never spell that out – but that’s because they mostly share both that sense of exceptionalism and a commitment to the continued possession of nuclear weapons.

Nuking herself in the foot

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There is little purpose in possessing nuclear weapons unless one is prepared to use them.  And for many of us – including some senior people in the world’s armed forces, that sentence would be equally valid without the last 7 words.  Theoretically, the only debate between the Labour Party’s supporters and opponents of the UK’s continued possession of such weapons is about the best way to get rid of them; but the word ‘theoretically’ is doing a lot of work there.  It would be more accurate to say that the party is divided between a minority who want more-or-less immediate nuclear disarmament, a majority who probably agree but are afraid to say so, and another minority who actually, genuinely believe that the UK should continue to possess such weapons.  And if that’s a fair summary, then the conclusion to be drawn from it is that the party’s policy on the issue is, in practice, decided not by those who have a clear view one way or the other, but by those who are simply too afraid of the Tory-driven reaction which would follow to express their views openly and honestly.

The result of that is to place people who have taken an honourable stance on the issue for almost the whole of their political lives – like Corbyn for instance – in a position where he cannot express his deeply-held view and is forced to pretend that he no longer agrees with everything he’s said on the issue for the past half century.  It also means that anyone aspiring to lead the party must answer the ‘button question’ and will immediately be deemed unelectable if they give the ‘wrong’ answer.  Thus it was that yesterday, Rebecca Long Bailey told us that she would indeed be willing to press the button and annihilate millions of people whilst also telling us that she’s an internationalist and supports a Green New Deal.  There’s nothing that quite says ‘workers of the world unite’ like an announcement of a willingness to use nuclear weapons against workers in another country.  And there’s nothing better for greening the economy than spending billions on turning scarce and valuable resources into weapons of mass destruction.  Apparently.

She could, of course, be lying.  I’d go further: she is certainly lying about something because there is no way that internationalism, green policies, and the use of nuclear weapons can coherently be combined, although the fact that she’s definitely lying about at least one doesn’t prove that she’s not lying about the rest.  Yet again, Labour are managing to fall into the nuclear trap from which the only escape is a series of attributes which most of them seem to be lacking – like integrity, honesty and courage.

Circular arguments

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The Secretary of State for Defence has told us this week that the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea justifies the UK’s possession of such weapons.  Unfortunately, he does not set out the logical process he’s used to get from the premise to the conclusion. 

Insofar as there is a degree of logic there, I can understand why a state which fears that another nuclear weapons state might attack it could convince itself that it therefore needs to have its own nuclear weapons to act as a deterrent to a potential attacker.  But isn’t that precisely the logic which has driven Kim Jong-Un to acquire nuclear weapons in the first place?  In essence, Fallon’s argument seems to be that North Korea is developing nuclear weapons to counter what it sees as a threat from us, so we need nuclear weapons to counter the threat that they will pose us as a result.  It’s a circular argument which leads inevitably in only one direction – nuclear proliferation.  If the existence of nuclear weapons in one state justifies the retention or acquisition of such weapons by another, the solution has more to do with getting rid of them than with upgrading them. 

I can understand why Fallon might honestly believe that Kim is mad enough to use his weapons once they are ready, and I wouldn’t disagree with that assessment.  A closed dictatorial society where people are afraid to tell the supreme leader anything that he might not want to hear could well create the conditions for a nuclear conflict to break out, but that’s not much of an argument for threatening all-out retaliation; it just proves that ‘deterrence’ doesn’t work in those particular circumstances.  The whole concept of deterrence is based on an assumption that possessors of nuclear weapons will carry out a careful assessment of the likely retaliatory damage to their own side before using them.  It also assumes both that those involved will make a rational assessment, and that weighing up the probable millions of deaths on both sides to decide who wins is in some way a rational act.

The real reason that the UK insists on retaining and upgrading its nuclear weapons – despite treaty obligations forbidding it from doing so – is to maintain the fiction that the UK is one of the world’s great powers and keep hold of its seat on the UN Security Council.  It’s one of the most expensive seats in the world.

Losing the argument

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The battering which Corbyn has taken throughout the election campaign on the question of Trident has been a sad reflection on the state of politics.  It’s an issue on which he has been utterly consistent for the whole of his political life, but seeing interviewers trying to bully him to say that he’s changed his mind when he very clearly has not done so has been a depressing exhibition of the power of the media to create and sustain the Tory narrative.  He’s handicapped, of course, by the lack of support for his viewpoint within his own party, particularly from those unions who seem to see preparing for nuclear annihilation as just an expensive job creation scheme, but refusing to change his mind, or even just pretend that he’s changed his mind to please a particular audience, is surely a sign of strength and conviction rather than the weakness as which it’s been portrayed.

The hounding of him on the issue during the Question Time non-debate left me feeling that there’s something very wrong in a country where a gung-ho willingness to incinerate millions by launching a first strike is deemed one of the most important tests of leadership.  It’s about time someone challenged the established consensus on nuclear weapons, and it’s a great pity that his own party has prevented Corbyn from doing that effectively at an election for the first time in a generation.

It also raises a question in my mind about the much-vaunted ‘British values’ which the Prime Minister keeps banging on about.  In the light of recent events, she has quite rightly condemned those who are prepared to strap on a suicide vest and go out and kill as many randomly selected civilians as they can as being something which is completely contrary to those values.  But at the same time, she tells us that being willing and ready to launch a nuclear strike which will kill millions of randomly selected civilians (as well as probably being suicidal for the UK if the target country itself possesses nuclear weapons) is a key test of support for those same values.

Now some will no doubt object to that comparison, and argue that the whole point of having nuclear weapons is never to need to use them; that the very act of possessing them acts as a deterrent.  And obviously, they can only be a deterrent if the ‘other side’ completely believes that the PM of the day will be ready and willing to use them if the UK is attacked or if he or she believes that the UK is in imminent danger of attack.  All of that is true, of course.  But my point is simply this: a Prime Minister who declares publicly and repeatedly that she is ready and willing to order the deaths of millions of civilians – men, women, and children alike – is not in a particularly good position to argue that attacking and killing civilians is somehow alien to her core values.  Of course there are differences of opinion about the circumstances in which it can be justified, but having stated that there are indeed circumstances in which it’s not only justified, but she’s willing to do it, she’s lost the argument about values and principles.  Corbyn, at least, is still in a position to argue on the basis of values and principles - May is not.

None of this can or should be taken to provide any sort of excuse or pretext for recent attacks, but ridding humanity of its propensity to resort to extreme violence isn’t a problem restricted only to ‘others’.  The UK’s continued possession of nuclear weapons is a clear and unequivocal statement of a willingness to use them, and thus is itself a provocative act.  And it’s the sort of act which tells us more about the true values of our political leaders than any amount of rhetoric ever can.

A means to an end

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The idea of a ‘progressive alliance’ has raised its ugly head again recently, both during Plaid’s annual conference and in relation to the pending by-election in Richmond Park.  It’s an issue which I’ve discussed in the past, because it raises a number of problems.  Glyn Morris referred to it yesterday as well, pointing out that, to be meaningful, it needs to be about more than an anti-Tory electoral alliance.

My first problem is with the concept: I’m not sure what the word ‘progressive’ means.  It’s a word often used by politicians and parties who see themselves as the good guys and the ‘non-progressives’ as the bad guys, but that is, in essence, a definition which starts from a subjective viewpoint.  Taking it as its lowest common denominator in recent discussions, the desired outcome would appear to be that Labour, the Lib Dems, Plaid, the SNP, and the Greens agree amongst themselves that only one candidate should stand in any given constituency, in order that the best-placed ‘progressive’ should be able to defeat the baby-eaters.  But what does that mean in practice?

Let’s take the issue of Trident, for a start.  Labour are in favour of renewing it, the Lib Dems want to replace it with an alternative form of nuclear deterrent (they don’t seem entirely sure what, only that it should be less accurate and less immediately available; a position the logic of which escapes me).  So, if there were to be a ‘progressive’ alliance, would someone like me, who is utterly opposed to the possession of nuclear weapons, be expected to vote for a Labour pro-Trident candidate in order to defeat a Tory pro-Trident candidate?  Why would anyone do that?  It’s a point which highlights the dodgy assumption being made by too many politicians that their electoral supporters would vote for a different party if only their normal party told them to.  It’s a position which owes more to abstract mathematical analysis than to serious political thought.

Or take the question of an ‘anti-austerity’ programme.  Labour’s pitch at the last general election may have been presented in that light, but the actual policy put forward was more about a disagreement about the extent and speed of austerity.  The basic Tory position was accepted; the difference was about the detail and timing.  Again, why would any serious opponent of austerity, who wants an alternative economic strategy, compromise and support austerity-lite just because his or her usual party told them to?

This article highlights some of the issues in arriving at a consensus platform, as seen from a Labour viewpoint.  Seen from that perspective, one of the conditions would be that “... the nationalist parties would have to accept a federal or ‘devo-max’ model of governance in exchange for using power to pursue progressive politics and give up hopes of independence.”  I think that neatly brings us to one of the key points: from a Labour perspective, the whole concept is not about what such an alliance actually achieves, it’s about getting Labour back into power and making other views subordinate to those of the big boys.  Just think about the constituencies across the UK, and which parties would be standing down for which other parties.  In the vast majority of constituencies in England (and in Wales), the simple reality is that such an alliance would mean other parties standing down to give Labour a free run.  It is, for Labour, a route back to two-party politics, marginalising other views in the process.

I can think of one, and only one, reason to back an alliance between disparate parties on a once-off basis, and that is an agreement to change the electoral system to one based on proportional representation.  (My own preference would be for STV, but there are other possible alternatives.)  Imagine electing a government which had that as its one and only priority, and which agreed in advance that it would resign and call new elections under the new system after passing the legislation.  I believe that would do more for the advancement of whatever progressive politics actually is than any political manoeuvring based solely on not being the Tories.

That’s something that Plaid, the SNP, the Green Party, and the Lib Dems could probably all agree on.  There’s a problem with Labour, though.  That particular ‘progressive’ party is wedded to the current system, and seems unlikely to change as long as they believe that they can win an outright majority under such a system.  In that context, talk of other parties standing down in favour of Labour hardly encourages them to shift their position.

Oh, and there’s another problem with PR as well.  Labour might not support it, but my understanding is that UKIP do.  I know that ‘official’ wisdom is that they eat even more babies than the Tories, but if we were serious about seeing a change in the electoral system as the number one priority for building an alternative approach to politics, one could make a good argument that, on a one-off basis, a UKIP MP might be a better bet than a Labour one.  That’s not a serious proposal, by the way; but it highlights a problem with the logic of much of what is being proposed, namely that the sort of alliance being proposed would not deliver real long term political change, only a short term change of government.

None of the above is intended to suggest that parties cannot or should not work together in relation to specific policy issues where there is common ground, but an electoral alliance which merely serves to reinforce Labour’s hegemony as the ‘main’ non-Tory party looks more like a regressive step to me than a progressive one.  Too many people who should know better are confusing ends with means.

Throwing good money after bad

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The way that the Labour Party’s spokesman on defence had his speech changed at the party‘s conference was reminiscent of the control freakery of the Blair years, albeit rather more publicly and considerably less competently.  But it was the substance of the issue which interested me more.

As I understand it, the argument being put forward by a number of people in the Labour Party (including the - now ex - Defence Spokesperson) is that, although there are many in the party who are personally sceptical about Trident, the decision has been taken in the House of Commons.  It is, therefore, too late to change it, so Labour should back it.  It’s a line which might help to heal some of the divisions within the parliamentary Labour party, but as arguments go, it’s one of the weakest I’ve ever heard.  On that basis, no party would ever be able to change any government policy on anything.

It amounts to saying that, since we’ve spent this much on the project already, all that will be wasted if we abandon it, so we’d better finish the job and spend the rest of the money.  The flaw in the line of argument is obvious; if it’s the wrong thing to do, then that amounts to throwing good money after bad.  It makes sense if, and only if, it’s the right thing to be doing in the first place.  It’s not much of an argument for spending huge sums of money on weapons of mass destruction which can never be used; indeed, it avoids even asking that question at all, treating it solely as a procedural matter.

Different types of democracy

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Years ago, the Labour Party’s version of internal democracy included taking policy decisions at conferences where all members had a direct vote in determining party policy.  In theory, anyway – the crucial decisions were usually taken by ‘card vote’ where each delegate cast the number of votes which the organisation (s)he represented was allowed.  So leaders of the big unions could and did cast a million or more votes each at a time.  And the number of votes available to them was the number which the union chose to register as ‘members’, without those ‘members’ ever needing to be named.  That number was usually based on a calculation of the balance between the cost of registering them and the influence thereby purchased, and bore little relationship to the actual political views of the ‘members’ concerned.

Still, it was democracy, of a sort, and it gave the members some sort of feeling of ownership of policy.  Mind you, if the leadership didn’t like the policy that the members voted for, they simply ignored it.  Sometimes people think that this is a peculiarly Blairite tendency, but I can remember Harold Wilson happily ignoring conference votes half a century ago.

Over the years, the right of the party’s membership to determine policy through an annual conference was slowly whittled away, and that process certainly came to a peak in the Blair years, leaving members with little real ownership of anything – and I’m sure that that has been a factor in the falling membership numbers of the party.

Yesterday, Owen Smith declared that he would, if elected leader, seek to restore the right of members to determine policy, and that he would then abide by decisions taken by the membership.  That’s certainly in line with what many of Corbyn’s supporters would like – but is he really serious?

What would happen, for instance, if a Labour Party conference voted for nuclear disarmament?  It’s happened before (and was duly ignored by the leadership), and with the influx of Corbyn-leaning members, it must be highly likely that it will happen again.  Is Smith really saying that he would suddenly drop his support for Trident renewal, and admit that he was wrong all along, because the members have now spoken and that must therefore be his new position?  And would all the other rebel MPs fall in line behind him, in a way that they have not done for Corbyn?

That seems an unlikely scenario to me, which leads me to a rather different conclusion.  It’s easy for someone to commit to something if he believes that he will never be called on to deliver on any promise.  The game is no longer about winning, but about trying to reduce the gap in order to provide a ‘justification’ for running the process again in the next year or so (and again thereafter if necessary) until the members finally take the ‘right’ decision.  It’s a form of democracy that he’s supporting, but it’s not democracy as we know it, to adapt a phrase.

Buying and selling nonsense

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One of the key policy differences between the leader of the Labour Party and the man seeking to depose him is the issue of nuclear weapons, and specifically the replacement of Trident.  Whilst there seem to be some in the Labour Party for whom the main justification for keeping Trident is that it provides jobs (making it the most expensive job creation scheme ever), the position of Owen Smith seems to be that he actually wants to get rid of nuclear weapons completely, but believes that the only way to do that is through bargaining with other nuclear weapons states, and to get a seat at the table, the UK needs to spend a vast sum of money renewing its current systems.

Whet they have not explained to date, as far as I can see, is why the UK so desperately needs to have a seat at that particular table in the first place.  If we didn’t currently possess such weapons, would anyone – in the Labour Party or elsewhere – seriously suggest that we needed to develop them simply in order to take part in the negotiations to get rid of them?  Of course not – the idea is a silly one.

But if that looks like nonsense, stop and consider another aspect of the question for a moment.  Does possession of such weapons actually guarantee a seat at the table, even if we were to agree that it was desirable to have one?  The evidence suggests otherwise.

The closest the world has actually come to an agreement to rid the planet of such weapons was in 1986, when Gorbachev proposed to Reagan that nuclear weapons should all be scrapped within ten years.  Sadly, the proposal came to nothing, largely because Reagan was not prepared to abandon the Strategic Defence Initiative.  But where was the UK in this?  Er – nowhere.  No seat at the table, no invite to the talks.  Although, formally, it was agreed that the nuclear capabilities of the UK and France should be excluded from the US-Soviet talks, it was implicitly assumed that if the ‘big boys’ did come to an agreement, then the ‘minor players’ would fall into line.  It’s unthinkable that they would not.

It remains true that any serious progress on nuclear disarmament depends on the US and Russia, and that the UK’s input to that will be close to zero, with or without weapons.  And that must be as obvious to the pro-nuclear lobby in the Labour Party as it is to me.  So why are so many people buying a line which is such patent nonsense?

Bigger sticks

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Last week, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister (for the time being, anyway) invited us to consider the scary prospect of the whole world giving up nuclear weapons – except for North Korea.  Who, he invited his audience to consider, would fancy living in such a world?  To him, the answer was obvious – but it’s one of those rhetorical flourishes which don’t stand up terribly well to detailed analysis.

Even from a simplistic perspective, would a world in which the Russian, American, Chinese, UK, French, Israeli, Indian and Pakistani nuclear arsenals had ceased to exist, leaving just a handful of weapons in the hands of one small isolated state, be better or worse than the situation today?  I can’t immediately see any argument which says that it wouldn’t be better.

But of course Benn was looking at a much narrower context than that.  If I understand his argument at all, it is that the UK needs to retain its nuclear deterrent so the North Korea wouldn’t ever dare to attack us with its own nuclear weapons.  But hold on a minute there – why would they want to?  I mean, it seems to me that they have other enemies which they are much more likely to pick on than the UK.  In that context, if they really did decide to fire one of their bombs at South Korea, say, would the UK really respond by firing a Trident missile at them?  It doesn’t seem a very credible scenario to me.

Perhaps the argument is that they are so irrational that they just might decide to go for the UK, and that’s why we need Trident to deter them.  But the whole point about a nuclear deterrent is that it assumes that ‘the enemy’ is not irrational, and will think very carefully about the potential consequences of their actions – if they cannot be depended on to rationally weigh up the costs and benefits of their actions, then there is no deterrent, only a mechanism for exacting revenge.

I suspect that the US Defence Secretary was much closer to the truth about why so many Labour-Tory politicians want to keep nuclear weapons, when he talked about the UK ‘punching above its weight’.  It’s nothing to do with deterring anyone, it’s all about being the big boy in the playground; one of the ones with the biggest sticks.  So, let me ask a variant of the question which Benn posed: “And finally, who fancies living in a world in which those with the biggest sticks tell everyone else what to do?”

No use depending on Labour

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Labour’s tribulations over Trident continue.  This week, Andy Burnham told us that getting to an agreed party position on the subject looked like an impossibility.   I agree – but actually, there’s nothing new about that.  Labour has had difficulty with the issue of nuclear weapons from the outset, and there has always been a dissident group within the party opposing the party’s official policy.  When the party has officially argued for nuclear weapons, the minority has been those arguing against; and in the two elections that I can recall when the party’s official position was to oppose such weapons, there were those in the party who continued to argue in favour of them. 

Burnham also said that it’s an issue on which a compromise position is neither sensible nor achievable.  Possessing nuclear weapons but committing never to use them is just plain daft, as is building boats specifically designed to carry them and then not arming them.  There is no middle way here.

On all of that, what Burnham says is true.  However, to date, that hasn’t stopped Labour having an official policy on the issue; it has simply meant that not all the party’s members support that policy.  Insofar as there is anything new now, it’s that implicit in what Burnham has said is that the party should not take a position at all if that position is contrary to what the pro-nuclear brigade believe, but should simply leave all members free to argue as they wish.  It is, apparently, OK for the anti-nuclear members to argue against policy if the policy is pro-nuclear, but the pro-nuclear side will oppose even having a policy if it isn’t the one that they support.

None of us yet knows whether the Labour leader’s view will prevail when the party’s new policy is decided.  But it probably doesn’t matter a lot.  Even if it does, and even if Labour wins the next election, it is highly unlikely the House of Commons will support Labour’s policy - too many Labour MPs will support the Tory position.  Besides, history tells us that even if Labour support the scrapping of nuclear weapons when in opposition, and win an election with that policy in their manifesto (as happened in the 1960s), once safely elected they will feel free to do the opposite.

At present, there seems to be only one route which has any hope of leading to UK nuclear disarmament, and that’s Scottish independence.  It’s certainly not through the Labour Party.

Losing the plot

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The latest comments by the Labour leader on Trident look like the sort of fudge which we’ve seen far too often from Labour on a range of issues.  Half-baked would seem to be an inadequate description of the suggestion that we should build a new generation of submarines which are specifically designed to launch nuclear missiles and then not arm them with nuclear weapons.  Insofar as there is any point at all to Trident, it is that it has the capacity to remain hidden at sea and exact revenge for a nuclear attack by posthumously wiping out a few cities somewhere.  As a means of delivering conventional explosives, it would be a hopelessly over-engineered and expensive approach, and all done, apparently, to keep people employed in the shipyards where the submarines would be built and the docks where they would be based - and to keep a few trade unions on side.

Labour have form on coming up with compromise and fudge designed first and foremost to maintain some sort of precarious party unity (as anyone familiar with the history of Welsh devolution will be only too aware).  But this suggestion takes that to a new height.  I can think of lots of ways of spending the £100billion which would produce more jobs and deliver more useful outputs.

Another example of the way in which Labour is losing the plot on Trident was the comment by the sacked shadow minister Michael Dugher, reported in the same story, that “We tried unilateralism before.  It ended in electoral disaster then.  There is no evidence to suggest that it won't end in disaster again.”  I’m sure that he is entirely sincere in his belief that nuclear weapons are essential to Labour’s electoral prospects, but the thing that struck me was the complete absence of any attempt to put forward any reason for possessing such weapons other than electoral success for Labour. 

Both his comments and those of Corbyn go to the heart of the problem that Labour faces.  It no longer has any raison d’être, in the eyes of most of its own MPs, than to win elections at all costs.  Corbyn started out with a different view – slowly but surely, he’s being brought back into line.

Uniting the workers of the world?

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Corbyn’s reshuffle was an agonising thing to watch, although part of the reason for that appears to have been his own willingness to listen to alternative points of view.  I’d have thought that a virtue, and entirely in line with his stated wish for a different type of politics (albeit badly undermined by some of the briefings which members of his core team seem to have been giving), but from the reaction of some members of his own party, they’d prefer the ruthless lack of consultation to which they’d become accustomed.

I, for one, welcome the fact that the Shadow Defence Secretary has been replaced by one more in line with Corbyn’s own view on the renewal of Trident.  It’s a step forward, although given that many Labour MPs remain wholly committed to spending more resources on weapons of mass destruction it’s a step along a path rather than the end of the journey.  It holds out some hope, though, that we might see senior opposition spokespersons arguing, for the first time since the 1980s, against the possession of nuclear weapons.

One particularly disappointing reaction was that of the trade unions.  One officer of the GMB was quoted as saying “We are absolutely clear and unequivocal that we will be supporting Trident replacement and any suggestion that there is alternative employment for people in that sector is utter nonsense and everyone is going to have to wake up to that fact”.  I understand, of course, that it is the job of trade unions to protect the interests of their members, but keeping people in jobs is not a rational argument for building and maintaining weapons of mass destruction which no sane person could or would ever use. 

It’s even sillier than arguing for a new nuclear power station on the same grounds – at least Wylfa B will produce some useful electricity.  It is an argument, in essence, for carrying out a pointless activity simply to keep people working.  I can think of a lot more useless activities which would be less potentially damaging than building and maintaining nuclear weapons if that’s really the way we want to run our economy.

But what it really underlines is a willingness to accept what is rather than argue for what should be.  And that’s what disappoints me most.  The father of one of those recognised by the GMB as a co-founder of the union coined the phrase “workers of the world unite”.  I somehow don’t think that either he, or his daughter, would have added “to build weapons which we can use to kill workers of other countries”. 

Protection and insurance

Tweet There is a mantra oft-repeated by politicians keen to spend more and more of our money on acquiring and using weapons that “the first duty of any government is to protect its citizens”.  It’s duly parroted by the media, solemnly pronouncing on whether party A or party B is actually behaving in a way consistent with the mantra.  It’s treated as unarguable truth, largely because it’s ‘obviously true’.

But one of the things that life has taught me is that truth isn’t always obvious; and that which is ‘obvious’ isn’t always true.  In this case, I’m not at all sure that the statement means anything, shorn of context and without defining what ‘protect’ means as well as ‘protection from what’.

The latest outing that I saw for the statement was in the Sunday Times, when former Labour leadership candidate Liz Kendall trotted it out in support of the proposition that it is Labour’s ‘patriotic duty’ to back Trident.  In this context, it is, in effect, a substitute for argument and debate; a sort of trump card which over-rules any objection.  That isn’t helpful to rational consideration.

I don’t disagree with the statement as such; I think that governments should seek to protect their citizens from those things which threaten them.  But I don’t see nuclear blackmail as one of the biggest threats facing me or most other citizens.  Nor, in reality, do I see terrorism – a blanket word which in itself needs a lot more definition and refinement – as being the biggest threat to citizens of the UK.

For most of the population (although I’d accept that this isn’t true for those who move in the same circles as most of our politicians) their economic situation, and concerns about health care and education are much bigger threats to their lifestyles and well being.  And it’s hard to see how diverting money away from those fields to pay for a new nuclear weapons system does anything other than increase those threats.  In essence, even if the politicians really do believe that the mantra is one by which they should govern, their actions seem destined to achieve the opposite.

Another argument which is regularly advanced for Trident is that it’s some sort of ‘insurance policy’, and that wise people don’t go around without insurance.  But that’s simply not true.  Insurance policies don’t prevent things happening; they can’t.  Insurance is about pooling risk so that those who lose are, in effect, compensated for their loss by those who don’t.  The ‘protection’ offered by Trident is more akin to that traditionally offered by the mafia than a conventional insurance policy.  Insurance is about compensation for damage, not striking back - there’s nothing in my life insurance policy about posthumous retaliation.  The comparison with insurance is nonsensical.

Trident isn’t about protection; it isn’t about insurance; and it has little to do with the threats currently facing most of the UK population.  What it is about is keeping the UK government in the big boys club, pretending that the UK is still some sort of global power, and closing our eyes to the realities of the twenty first century.  It’s no way to build a safer world.

Comrades in arms?

Tweet The report that Wales’ First Minister will no longer be extending an invitation to base the Trident nuclear weapons submarines in Wales is welcome, albeit belated.  It’s not entirely clear whether his change of heart is a reflection of the views of his new boss, or merely a recognition that an off-the-cuff remark in a debate in the Senedd, intended merely to score a political point in debate, came to look rather silly after the event.  It always looked more like a case of foot-in-mouth disease than a thought-through policy pronouncement.

At UK level, the Labour Party is still struggling with the whole issue.  Silly and wholly uncomradely remarks made by Ken Livingstone didn’t help, of course.  But some of the Labour Party’s own MPs have succeeded in giving the impression that they are quite happy to have a review of the party’s policy as long as the review is conducted only by people who agree with the current policy and doesn’t include anyone who might actually want to question it.  Sir Humphrey would be proud of them.

Whilst Livingstone’s comments were quite rightly turned upon, his silliness and his subsequent apology have unfortunately diverted attention away from the substance of the views being put forward by the MP he attacked, Kevan Jones.  As the BBC reported, Mr Jones said “I'm not sure Ken knows anything about defence.  It will only damage our credibility amongst those that do and who care about defence”.

Whilst he did not deserve the personal attack to which he was subjected, his view does need to be challenged.  It’s a very dismissive view to adopt towards any alternative viewpoint – in effect, he’s saying that ‘credibility’ means agreeing with him.  It’s a classic example of the way in which conservative politicians of all parties attempt to close down debate and restrict the range of opinion which can be discussed – and it avoids the substance of the issue completely.

Nuclear chickens and eggs

Tweet Yesterday, Baron Kinnock demonstrated his commitment to internal Labour Party democracy by telling the party’s duly elected leader that he will never win power promising unilateral nuclear disarmament.  Three things struck me about this.

In the first place, there is a serious question as to whether it’s actually true.  It’s one of those things that can never be known until it’s tested; so I can no more be certain that it isn’t true than he can be certain that it is.  I do seem to recall, however, that there is some empirical evidence to the contrary, albeit a long time ago.  I’m sure that the Labour Government elected in 1964 had a manifesto pledge to scrap Trident – it was one of the things that excited me at the time about the possibility of a Labour Government.

(They didn’t actually implement the promise of course.  But whether any government would ever implement such a promise is a rather different question from the one which Kinnock has raised.)

Secondly, even supposing that it were true, what does it really tells us?  At best it would tell us that if leaders of all the three major parties reiterate consistently and in unison for fifty years (with one brief, minor – albeit welcome – aberration under Michael Foot) that possession of nuclear weapons is essential, and manage to convince the electorate that it's true, then it’s unlikely that the public will change its opinion overnight.  That wouldn’t be an unreasonable conclusion to draw, but it’s a long way short of what he said.  Which came first - public opinion or the insistence of politicians?

There’s a fundamental logic flaw in the conclusion that he did draw, namely that no party can ever propose scrapping nuclear weapons because of the climate of opinion which politicians like himself have done so much to normalise.  It amounts to little more than saying that after telling people one thing for fifty years, you can’t simply tell them that it wasn’t actually true, and must continue to peddle the same line indefinitely, because you can only be elected by telling the same old lie. 

And thirdly, he didn’t even mention the question of whether the UK needs or should have nuclear weapons at all.  It’s as if that is entirely a secondary question to the Labour Party’s need to win elections.  Still, I suppose that saying we must build new nuclear weapons so that Labour can win the election is at least a bit more honest than the Labour Party’s official position, which is, if I understand it correctly:

1.    Nuclear weapons are bad

2.    No country which doesn’t currently possess them must be allowed to develop them

3.    Those countries which do possess them must negotiate to get rid of them

4.    The UK needs to spend £100billion on new nuclear weapons so that it has something which it can negotiate to get rid of

Trident renewal is thus either a £100 billion fling to get Labour elected, or else it’s a very expensive bargaining chip.  Or maybe both.  It’s a depressing lack of leadership and vision, an inability to imagine that politicians might have any responsibility to lead rather than follow.  And the issue is a classic example of what went wrong for Labour as a would-be party of peace, progress and justice.

Truth and lies

Tweet There were two related stories in the Sunday Times this week (sadly hidden behind their paywall) about the renewal of the Trident nuclear ‘deterrent’.

The first was about Cameron and the fact that he, like previous Prime Ministers in the nuclear age, had to write personal letters to the captains of all four Trident submarines.  Described as ‘letters from the grave’, the hope is that these letters are never actually opened, but simply destroyed when they are replaced by new letters from a new PM.  The letters give the submarine commanders instructions as to what they should do in the event that the UK has already been destroyed by a nuclear attack.

He didn’t talk about the content – he could hardly do that.  But insofar as the idea of deterrence has any credibility at all, the ‘enemy’ (whoever that may currently be) has to believe that the instructions would be for the commanders to unleash their destruction and obliterate between 15 and 20 cities and all their inhabitants.  If the enemy doesn’t believe that, then it is hardly a deterrent.

But if the letters are ever opened, then clearly deterrence will have failed.  The enemy will have weighed up the odds and decided to press the button anyway.  At the point at which such letters ever get opened, it’s way too late for deterrence – by then, it’s purely about posthumous revenge.  Oh, and incidentally making the world even less hospitable for anyone who survived the first attack than it already will have become. 

It serves only to underline the madness of the idea that possession of such weapons can ever make the world a safer place that the concept of deterrence depends on each side thinking that the other would sooner add to the death and destruction that has already been caused than try and save whatever would be left of humanity.

The second story was about a former senior US defence official called Franklin Miller trying to debunk the suggestion that the UK’s nuclear force is not as independent as is claimed, and that there is some sort of US veto on its use.  The idea of such a veto has been around a long time, and is credible, not least because the UK’s missiles aren’t actually UK property; they’re merely leased from the US.  It is only the warheads which are the property of the UK.  It is entirely possible that there is some sort of software or hardware lock on the firing of missiles without US agreement.

Clearly, for an ‘independent’ deterrent to be of any value the enemy have to believe that it is truly independent; otherwise they do not need to fear the UK, only the US.  So people like the UK Government and Mr Miller need to convince the enemy that it is truly independent, even if it isn’t.  That in turn means that we can never know whether they’re telling the truth or not.  They are truly caught in a logic trap of their own making.  No matter how many times or how forcibly they re-iterate the claim that there is no veto, we can never be certain that they’re telling us the truth.

In a sense, both stories come together at this point, because they both underline the fact that we can never know whether governments are telling the truth or lying.  And this isn’t exactly some unimportant little issue…

Mixing the missions

Tweet Jeremy Corbyn's mission to Scotland to try and recover his party's position there, coupled with the enthusiasm of so many of his party's MPs for possessing and being willing to use weapons of mass destruction must surely raise an interesting conundrum for him.  On the one hand, he wants Labour to defeat the SNP in Scotland, and on the other he wants rid of Trident.  But paradoxically, achieving the first of those makes it considerably less likely that he can ever achieve the second.

Given the statements he's been making in Scotland, and the extent to which he's already been equivocating over Trident to appease his MPs, it seems to be increasingly clear which way he'll jump.  A victory for Labour is more important to him than getting rid of nuclear weapons.  Sadly, but not unexpectedly, he'll turn out to be less different from his predecessors than many have been assuming.  Too many people are being taken in by his rhetoric - when push comes to shove, it will always be party over principle.

Attacking the wrong target

Tweet Jeremy Corbyn seems to have upset some of his shadow cabinet colleagues by saying openly and honestly that, if he were Prime Minister, he would not authorise the use of nuclear weapons.  Both Labour and Tory MPs - ably aided and abetted by the BBC who seem to have swallowed their argument hook, line, and sinker - have jumped on his words as an indication that the result will somehow be to weaken the UK’s defences.  The whole point of a ‘deterrent’, they argue, is that the unspecified ‘enemies’ out there have to believe that they would be used, otherwise they’re useless.

Some of us think such weapons are useless anyway.  It’s impossible to conceive of a situation where any rational person would authorise their use.  (But perhaps that’s my problem - expecting rationality in a politician?)  Possession seems to be more about being one of the big boys in the school yard than anything else – but it’s an awfully expensive way of getting one of the biggest sticks.

Seriously, even if Corbyn had answered the question in any different way, would he have been credible?  Labour’s warmongers seem to want him to say something like, “I’ve campaigned against nuclear weapons all my life, I believe that the use or possession of such weapons is morally indefensible, but of course, if I were Prime Minister, I’d be willing to use them”? 

One has only to ask the question to see the flaw in the argument that he could or should have answered other than as he did.  He would not have been in the least bit credible.

What would be far more useful and meaningful would be to ask all those who are now criticising him to explain, or to give one hypothetical example, how and when they would be willing to authorise the mass slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians in some distant cities.  I’m sure that they’d all respond by saying something along the lines of ‘not wanting to let the enemy know in advance what he could or could not get away with’.  But the fact that they’d all say that there are circumstances in which they would be willing to use such weapons tells us all we need to know about their moral compasses.

Corbyn isn’t the one who needs to defend his stance.

A safe opposition

Tweet It’s touching to see how concerned so many Conservatives are about the need to have an effective and credible opposition.  Or it would be if they really meant what they are saying.  The MP for Monmouth, in the wake of the Corbyn victory, expressed his concern about the possible new direction of the Labour Party, saying “… there has to be a reasonably strong centre-left party in any democracy…”.

I think that what he really means is that the best way to ensure the predominance of Conservative ideology is to ensure that the main opposition party broadly accepts everything that the Conservatives say.  Conversely, an opposition party which says something different creates a real danger that people might start to understand that there really is an alternative to the Labour-Tory consensus of recent decades.

Cameron was a bit more honest, when he said about questions such as nationalisation and Trident “These are arguments I thought we had dealt with…” – i.e., that Labour has long accepted the Tory position.  It’s easy to see why he would prefer to have both the two main potential parties of government broadly in agreement on most issues.  It helps to legitimise the prevailing ideology, and ensure that people have no credible electoral option to vote for anything other than minor change.

Anything that challenges any part of that consensus, rather than simply falling into it to be seen as being ‘electable’, represents a move away from the two-faction one-party state which the UK has effectively become.  It remains to be seen, though, whether that move will be as large or as sustained as its supporters claim.  I’m still sceptical.