The new government will be faced by a hard decision on Trident replacement.

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.

Labour must ask serious questions about their purpose not just plan to return to the centre ground.

After recording their worst result in a general election since 1935, returning just 202 MPs to parliament in December 2019, the Labour Party is to convene a commission into what went wrong.

The commission will be run by Labour Together, a member’s group with the Canute like task of promoting unity in the party. It will be chaired by former shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell and will include former leader Ed Milliband.

The commission will report back to whoever wins the leadership contest, the runners and riders for which will emerge early in the new year.

Both Powell and Milliband have the Labour Party in their blood and have shown polite, compared to many of their colleagues, misgivings about the direction under Jeremy Corbyn. Powell was a leadership contender in 2015 and despite his bacon sandwich related misfortunes and the bizarre decision to have the party’s policy pledges carved onto a giant tombstone in the closing days of the 2015 election Ed Milliband owns one of the sharpest brains on either side of the house.

The commission will hear evidence from the 59 former MPs who lost their seats in December and hold focus groups for party members. It is, of course, good to hear what the view looks like from inside the tent, though it might be somewhat obscured given that said tent has just been blown down by a perfect storm.

As a corrective I’d like to offer my own view based on having been a member of the Labour Party between 2001 and 2010. One who was driven away by many of the issues that have led them to this sorry point.

The first thing that must be said is that Jeremy Corbyn made some serious mistakes and so is in many ways the author of his own misfortunes. These include not taking a position on Brexit, failing to respond adequately to accusations of anti-Semitism in the party and relying too heavily on support form the hard left.

This last group, in the shape of Momentum, despite near fanatical loyalty to Corbyn did him few practical favours. Many entered the party by paying their £3 fee as supporters with the purpose of voting in a left-wing leader and then stuck around to pick fights with the Blairites. They also brought with them the familiar political narrative of the far left that winning elections is less important than maintaining ideological purity.

The answer to the mess that has been created is, according to former prime minister Tony Blair, is to reject ‘Corbynism’ and for the party to return to the centre ground. Preferably under a leader cast in his image.

Advice from a three-time election winner is always going to be alluring to a part reeling from losing four elections in a row. The awkward thing is though that making such a journey would be at best a false hope offering only ineffectual mediocrity; at worst it could be the path to disaster.

Many of the problems that boiled over in 2019 could be seen when I left the party in 2010. In fact, they were around long before then, I remember in 2005 the year the saw Blair win his last election that members should ‘hold their noses’ and vote for a party they didn’t much like for rear of getting something worse in its place.

The biggest of these problems is the disconnect between the party elite in London and grassroots members in what the former probably think of as the ‘provinces. It is a relationship based on a mixture of paranoia and paternalism that has seethed out of sight for decades until the pressure got too great and resulted in an explosion.

The paranoid belief of New Labour that if given the slightest say in making policy grassroots members would embrace revolutionary Marxism led to the ideological hollowing out of the party. Unlike the Tories who believe in power and wealth and nothing else the Labour Party must believe in something to have any purpose; when it doesn’t it drifts about in the doldrums desperately trying to catch the wind of whatever is popular now.

On a practical level the control freakery of New Labour led to the collapse of local parties, branches were swept up into tame CLP’s, all the better to be controlled by regional offices who often acted like colonial administrators. As a result, ties with communities that had taken decades to create were severed at a stroke.

Local Labour parties also lost control over the selection of candidates, this led to legions of eager young men and women with impeccable metropolitan credential being ‘parachuted’ into communities they didn’t understand; many went on to compound things by not even trying to do so.

This led to the embitterment of individuals and whole communities who felt their loyalty to the Labour Party had been taken for granted. The 2016 referendum on leaving the EU provided the catalyst for their resentment to be turned into rage.

Now as it reels from another defeat at the polls the Labour Party must accept some truths that will be awkward for all sides of its internal divisions to accept.

The first is that for all his mistakes Jeremy Corbyn got one important thing right, he gave the Labour Party back its sense of being different. If the hard left and the Blairites had been able to have a mature dialogue rather than a squabble for supremacy that might have translated into the purpose the party so badly needs.

Second, this isn’t the 1990’s, today the centre ground will not hold. Despite his love of larking about for the cameras and profession of being a ‘one nation Tory’ Boris Johnson has led his party sharply to the right. An opposition that promises to follow much the same sort of policies, but to do so in a ‘kinder’ way; will be ineffective and irrelevant.

The third and maybe most awkward truth takes the form of a question, in 2019 just what is the Labour Party for? I can get a dozen books out of the library telling me about its past; but neither I nor many people who are still members have a clue about its future.

Whoever wins the leadership election and gets to read the report of this commission might have to recognise that his or her first task may have to be thinking seriously about dissolving the Labour Party and forming a new progressive one in its place.

A Bad Night for Labour as the Tories Sweep Through Stoke and Other Heartlands.

On Thursday the UK held a General Election in December for the first time since the 1920's. It turned out to be one that delivered something like an electric shock to the body politic.

The exit poll conducted for the BBC and published after voting stopped at ten pm suggested the Tories would have a fifty-seat majority. At the time this seemed somewhat optimistic; before dawn broke on Friday, they had secured one of seventy-eight.

Remarkably it was one gained by winning seat after seat in the North and Midlands where until recently they didn't count the Labour votes; they weighed them.

Election nights are an odd mix of short bursts of frantic activity and long stretches of boredom. Long before anyone makes a declaration you have drunk enough coffee to make your appreciation of what is going on as realistic as a Salvador Dali painting.

Out of the fog of confusion I was able to piece together a few observations.

As usual there were a few shock defeats, among the suddenly ex-MPs trying their best to smile as their career dissolves live on television was Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson. She started the campaign saying she was poised to be the UK's next prime minister and ended it with time on her hands to spend looking up hubris in the dictionary.

Another surprise exit was Denis Skinner, the Beast of Bolsover slain after almost fifty years in parliament. The next time Black Rod knocks on the door of the commons chamber there will be nobody to ask if it's the Avon lady, the political life of our country will suddenly be a little bit more vanilla than it used to be.

It was a bad night for Labour with the promise of only worse days to follow. Nowhere was this more evident than in my hometown of Stoke -on-Trent. The prediction was that the Stoke Central and Stoke North seats would go to the Conservatives as Stoke South has in 2017.

To be honest it wasn't one I took all that seriously, Stoke is the sort of city where voting Tory is anathema to most people, or so I thought. Turns out I was wrong, both seats turned blue contributing to Labour's worst defeat since 1935.

There were more worrying signs than just the pile of voting slips filling the baskets of the Tory candidates. All the young people in the hall were wearing blue rosettes, suggesting a corps of activists and potential candidates that could consolidate their hold on the council as well as the three parliamentary seats for years to come.

Labour, by contrast looked old and tired, like a party bemused by how quickly things have fallen apart. As recently as 2005 former Stoke Central MP Mark Fisher was able to walk around the room long before two am calling out 'weigh am in! Weigh so in!' as everyone gave him a standing ovation.

How far and how fast the mighty have fallen; how did they get into this mess?

In Stoke Labour's demise has been coming for years, decades of being the only game in town has made them complacent and unimaginative, a deadly combination on politics. While Labour were looking anywhere but where they were going the city was changing, the old industries were dying and with them old loyalties.

Nationally Labour were sunk by the person a small but influential cabal thought was their greatest asset; Jeremy Corbyn. In 2017 he looked almost charismatic compared to the leaden ineptitude of Theresa May, despite losing he became a minor cultural icon appearing on stage at Glastonbury and having football crowds chanting his name.

Deafened by the shouts of 'Oh Jeremy Corbyn ' he made the mistake of believing his own hype. All he had to do, it must have seemed was keep turning left and he would lead his party to the promised land.

While the leader had his eye off the ball his party was tangling itself up in ever more complicated knots over accusations of anti-Semitism and scaring the City with the most openly socialist manifesto since 1983. Now he, or rather lots of MPs in former safe Labour seats have paid the price.

Where do Labour go next? Jeremy Cornyn has said he will not lead the party into another election; but will stay on while the party goes through a period of reflection. He is unlikely to get his wish, no head rolls quicker than that of an icon who has failed.

Whoever takes on the Labour leadership will be taking on one of the most unenviable jobs in British politics. They will be obliged to swallow some bitter truths.

The bitterest of these is that working-class culture as the Labour Party understood it has changed. Their core vote no longer work and play together, they aren't happy to take what the leadership think they should be given for their own good either

They have embraced a cynical individualism that that is ripe to be exploited by an equally cynical populist like Boris Johnson.

The left, at least in the incarnation represented by Jeremy Corbyn has failed, the centre probably won't hold either. Quite what sort of country is going to slouch away from Brexit and its birth I shudder to think.

The Green New Deal and UNI could free millions of people from poverty.

This has been called 'the Brexit election', while it’s true that the issue of when or if the UK leaves the European Union is important, there is so much more at stake.

On 12th December we will be voting for the sort of country we want to be in the years to come.

Do we want isolation from the wider world and a populist government that makes futile gestures like bringing back blue passports, but chips away at important civil liberties like worker’s rights and environmental protection?

Do we instead want to be an open, forward looking country that respects its long history; without making it a weight to hold us back from progress?

As a candidate for the Green Party in one of the three constituencies representing my hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, I believe we should look out to the world and the future because that is what Britain has always done.

That is why I am backing the Green New Deal, an ambitious plan to invest in our shared future.

New jobs created in the industries of tomorrow, a better transport system and an end to the inequality that has divided our society for forty years. Action to tackle the climate emergency and bring UK carbon emissions down to net zero by 2030.

Part of this new deal is using a Universal Basic Income to transform the social welfare system, moving away from sanctions and suspicion and towards hope and inclusion.

Universal Basic Income will lift every citizen above the poverty level, freeing them from the want, stress and insecurity that shadow the lives of so many people. In practice someone working 37.5 hours a week would see their income rise by 10 to 15% thanks to UBI.

This would replace most current income related benefits, ending the indignity of means testing and massively reducing administration costs.

Introducing UBI wouldn't just produce a cost savings for the state, it would set millions of people free from the struggle to get by. This would result in a net improvement in their physical and mental health, taking the weight of dealing with the consequences of an unfairly punitive welfare system.

It would also set them free to study, start small businesses and to care for their families; unleashing a tidal wave of previously stymied potential. Far from adding a cost burden onto the state, this could lift the UK out of the doldrums of poor productivity and make us an economic powerhouse.

Delivering the Green New Deal will involve a serious financial investment, £141.5 billion, raised through a combination of measures including tax changes, cancelling Trident and taxing polluters.

As a charity volunteer in Stoke-on-Trent I see every week the consequences paid by vulnerable people for decisions taken in London by politicians who understand little about the challenges they face.

The Green New Deal and UBI would give them something they have been denied for far too long. The hope that comes from knowing that their government is working with rather than against them.