David Cameron
told the Conservative Party conference in his set-piece leader's speech today
“My first duty
as Prime Minister is to keep people safe. Our belief in
strong defence and sound money. ..In government, I have a team who keep
us safe at home and abroad……Justine Greening, Michael Fallon, Philip Hammond
and Theresa May. and because our independent nuclear
deterrent is our ultimate insurance policy – this Government will order four
new trident submarines.”
Tim Shipman, political editor of the Sunday Times, instantly tweeted “This
may be the easiest speech any leader has made in 50 years. Standing ovations
for supporting nuclear deterrence…”
The prime minister’s pro-Trident comments
followed the equally robust backing given to nuclear weapons by defence secretary
Michael Fallon, who made a typical red-meat rant to the swivel-eyed Tory
faithful “representatives” on Sunday (4
October) in Manchester
Having played
the Tories-are-the true-patriots card for starters, he turned to Labour’s
equivocation over Trident (leader against; most MPs for), highlighting:
“Efficiency
savings mean we will be able to spend more on cyber, more on unmanned aircraft,
more on the latest technology, keeping ahead of our adversaries. Labour’s
approach couldn’t be more different – or more dangerous. How did they respond
to their election defeat? By electing a leader who would weaken our national
security – who would scrap Trident, leave NATO, and can’t think of circumstances
in which he would use our Armed Forces. This is no time for Britain to retreat
from the world, to let terror triumph, or to put our people in peril.”
And added:
“The biggest investment decision this Parliament will have to take is to replace the ballistic missile submarines that provide our nuclear deterrent.
For 46 years
our deterrent has been deployed every hour of every day. Anyone thinking of
ending this unbroken patrol has to be absolutely certain that no nuclear
threats will emerge in the 2030s, 2040s and 2050s. I’m not prepared to take
that gamble so we will ask MPs of all parties to put national security first
and support building four new ballistic missile submarines.
And we won’t
let any coalition of left-wing Labour MPs and the SNP stop us.”
More emolliently, foreign secretary Philip Hammond's said in his own speech to Conservative conference also on
Sunday:
“We now have a
Labour Party which poses a serious risk to our national security…while we are
renewing Britain’s nuclear deterrent, he wants to scrap it…Standing up to
Russia because our security depends on upholding international law and
punishing those who breach it.” (https://www.politicshome.com/foreign-and-defence/articles/news/philip-hammonds-speech-conservative-conference)
|
Indeed, on Sunday morning’s Marr
programme on BBC 1, Mr Cameron told viewers If you ... believe like me that Britain should keep the
ultimate insurance policy of an independent nuclear deterrent, you have to
accept there are circumstances in which its use would be justified.” Cameron observed “If you give any other answer then you
are, frankly, undermining our national security, undermining our deterrent.”
|
|
|
|
|
Cameron’s statement followed Labour
leader Jeremy Corbyn’s unequivocal pledge he would not use nuclear weapons: “I
don’t think we should be spending £100bn on renewing Trident. That is a quarter
of our defence budget,” he sensibly said, adding in his interview last week on the BBC radio four Today
Programme“, 187 countries
don't feel the need to have a nuclear weapon to protect their security, why
should those five need it themselves? We are not in the era of the Cold War any
more."
He stressed:
"I am opposed to the use of nuclear weapons, I am opposed to the holding
of nuclear weapons. I want to see a nuclear-free world. I believe it is
possible."
But the British public would never understand from these apparently
diametrically opposite views that Corbyn and Cameron – and his defence and
foreign secretaries - actually agree on
the importance of nuclear disarmament.
Eight months ago, Mr Hammond foreign
office mandarins
hosted a two day high-level meeting at its London conference venue, Lancaster
House, of
senior diplomatic representatives of the other four members of the
self-appointed nuclear weapons club on the United Nations Security Council, the
so-called Permanent Five (P5).
This brought to London Wang Qun,
Director General, Department of Arms Control and Disarmament for China; Hélène
Duchêne, Director for Strategic Affairs for France; Rose Gottemoeller, Under
Secretary for Arms Control and International Security for the United States;
and Grigory Berdennikov, Ambassador-at-Large for Russia, to meet with the FCO’s
top disarmament diplomat, Peter Jones, Director for Defence and International
Security.
Foreign Office minister Tobias
Ellwood told MPs at the time:: “The London P5 Conference covered a wide range
of issues relevant to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, encompassing
disarmament, non-proliferation and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”
After their meeting on 6 February the P5
diplomats issued a joint statement through the Foreign Office (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/joint-statement-from-the-nuclear-weapon-states-at-the-london-p5-conference), stressing, in a very interesting passage, considering it is co-signed by Russia: “At their 2015 Conference the P5 restated
their belief that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty remains the essential
cornerstone for the nuclear non-proliferation regime and the foundation for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament,
and is an essential contribution to international security and stability.”
It then added:
“The P5 reaffirmed that a step-by-step approach to nuclear disarmament that
promotes international stability, peace and undiminished and increased security
for all remains the only realistic and practical route to achieving a world without nuclear weapons.”
Barely weeks before, Mr Fallon had
told MPs in a Parliamentary debate on Trident: “we also share the vision of a world that is
without nuclear weapons, achieved through
multilateral disarmament.”
(Hansard, 20 January 2015, column 105 www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm150120/debtext/150120-0002.htm)
You would scarcely believe it from the red-blooded rants
at the Tory conference this week
No comments:
Post a Comment