This week three former defence ministers in the previous Labour party have published newspaper articles supporting the replacement of the UK's Trident nuclear weapon system. Lord West, former Chief of the Naval Staff and Minister for Security and Counter Terrorism, wrote in the Independent newspaper that discarding Trident would "imperil the UK's security" while Lord Hutton and Lord Robertson, both defence secretaries in the Blair government, told the Telegraph that there is "no alternative" to keeping Trident.
The tired old arguments that the three Lords have wheeled out to defend their faith in the UK's weapons of mass destruction have been comprehensively trashed in a response by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but it's interesting to reflect for a moment on just why three senior members of Labour's old guard are suddenly giving voice to their concerns over Trident.
There's no doubt that the right wing of the Labour Party are worried that the Party might ditch its policy in support of Trident replacement - a hangover from Blair's term as party leader. Des Browne, another of Labour's former Defence Secretaries, has been highly sceptical about the need to replace Trident and even Blair, writing in his memoirs, confessed that he felt there were good reasons for not replacing Trident.
Public opinion has long been against replacing Trident and, as cuts in public spending bite deeply into military budgets, many politicians and ex-soldiers are now also calling for the Trident replacement project to be scrapped. The pro-Trident lobbies on the right wing fringes of the Conservative and Labour Party can see one of their most prized policies slipping away from them, and are fighting desperately to convince us that Trident must be replaced.
Labour are currently reviewing party policy before the next election - including policy on defence and nuclear weapons. Ed Miliband has said that he will wait for the findings of the government's Trident Alternatives Review to be published before deciding what that policy should be - and there is a high chance that the review will say that replacing Trident is not the only way of guaranteeing the UK's security. This week's newspaper articles by their Labour Lordships aren't just a outdated throwback from politicians who are still fighting the Cold War - they're a crude attempt to push Labour's leaders into supporting the controversial and costly Trident replacement project before all the arguments have been discussed.
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