The Trident debate might be about national security, but all the parties have political points they want to make. Indeed, the reason the debate is happening now is that the Tories wanted something to bring them together, and divide, Labour post-referendum.
Angus Robertson, the SNP’s Westminster leader, began with a few kind words for the new Prime Minister. But then, he was straight on to repeatedly—and theatrically—asking the government front bench to set out what the full life time cost of the Trident replacement would be.
There is an argument to be had about the cost of Trident—and whether it is the most effective form of defence spending—but Robertson’s argument was rather undercut by him saying that the SNP opposed it at any cost.
However, you could tell how much the SNP want to make of the idea that Trident is being forced on Scotland against its will by the fact that at the end of Robertson’s speech, the SNP benches stood to applaud him.
Robertson was followed by the chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee Crispin Blunt, who said he opposed Trident. He argued that it would be better to spend money on conventional forces than Trident, that the submarine-based deterrent could be rendered useless by technology and that there were cheaper nuclear options available than Trident.
But the real action in this debate has been on the Labour side. John Woodcock, a regular Corbyn critic and an advocate of Trident as befits a Barrow MP, begun by saying that he—unlike the Labour front bench—was proud to speak for Labor party policy in the debate. He emphasised that he opposed unilateralism and accused Corbyn of not making an honest case, comparing him unfavourably to that other unilateralist Michael Foot. Woodcock wasn’t the only Labour MP to put the boot into Corbyn. Toby Perkins, who ran Liz Kendall’s leadership campaign, said that he’d been a member of CND as a teenager and that the front bench’s arguments were ones that his 13-year-old self would have made.
This debate has highlighted the chasm between Corbyn and the Parliamentary Labour Party. But I suspect that those preparing Corbyn for the coming leadership election, are not unhappy to be having an argument about nuclear weapons as the contest gets going.
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