When politicians return to Westminster after the new year holiday the main item on their agenda will be Brexit. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has expressed a determination to push the UK’s exit from the EU through by the end of January, with an eighty-seat majority he will probably get his way too.
There is though, another equally major issue that will have to be decided by the new parliament, whether to replace Trident, the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
Replacement is part of the ‘Dreadnought’ programme to replace the country’s existing fleet of four Vanguard class submarines with four new ones. These will be used to maintain the continuous at sea deterrence strategy.
Plans for replacing Trident have been in the works since 2006 with a projected cost of £41billion, making it the largest capital project the government has on its books. In order to keep things on track to meet the completion deadline of 2030 a decision will have to be made during this parliament.
A final decision on replacing Trident was deferred during the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security review until the one to be carried out in 2019/20. The UK currently has four Vanguard class submarines armed with Trident II D5 missiles that are held in a common pool with the United States. There are 215 warheads held in the Trident stockpile, of which 120 are operationally available.
The cost of the Dreadnought programme involves £31billion to replace the submarines involved with a £10billion contingency fund. There is also a £2.5billion annual cost for keeping the vessels in service, representing 6% of the defence budget.
The National Audit Office has previously raised concerns that despite being within its budget the programme to replace Trident could have a negative impact on the affordability of the Ministry of Defence’s equipment budget.
Opposition to replacing Trident has also been expressed by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), who say the real bill for the programme will be closer to £200billion once decommissioning and other costs are accounted for.
In a statement on their website CND say: ‘Preventing Trident replacement remains an urgent priority, we want to see a world without nuclear weapons and stopping Trident is an essential part of that process’.
Any decision to replace Trident made this year would coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT). A conference to be held later in 2020 is set to criticise nuclear armed nations for refusing to sign the treaty.
Quoted on the Politicshome website a UK government spokesperson denies that replacing Trident would breech any legal obligations saying: ‘all parties are agreed that the NPT does not prohibit updating weapons-systems’. Then goes on to highlight the significant arms reductions made by the UK since the end of the Cold War with the stockpile held projected to have fallen by 65% by the middle of the coming decade.
A large majority gained in the recent general election gives the Conservatives a strong position from which to push through replacement, a policy the party has long advocated. They may also have support from the Liberal Democrats who are, partially, in favour of replacing Trident, although this position may change in the wake of their impending leadership election.
Labour included replacing Trident in their 2019 election manifesto, although leader Jeremy Corbyn was vocal about the fact that if elected as prime minister, he would never authorise its use. This position may also change when the party elects a new leader.
The Green Party and the Scottish Nationalists both oppose renewing Trident and the UK having nuclear weapons, with the latter making agreement with this position a requirement of their cooperation with any partner in a coalition government.
Trident is an issue that has the potential to divide political parties and the general public alike, with some seeing it as a guarantee of freedom, and other as a huge and wasteful expense.
It is also clear that the costs involved in decommissioning one weapons-system and installing another are likely to be closer to the £200billion suggested by CND that the £41billion official total. At the election the Conservatives promised to invest in areas of the country that had been forgotten for decades, it is hard to see how they can pay for this and buy and maintain a nuclear deterrent at least on the current scale.
Opposing the replacement of Trident may provide a rallying point for an opposition that is still reeling from the unexpected election result. It might also though further expose their internal divisions.
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