An exclusive poll carried out by YouGov for Left Foot Forward reveals that 63 per cent oppose the Government's plans to renew the Trident nuclear deterrent while a diminishing number of people believe that nuclear weapons make them safer.
An exclusive poll carried out by YouGov for Left Foot Forward reveals that 63 per cent oppose the Government’s plans to renew the Trident nuclear deterrent while a diminishing number of people believe that nuclear weapons make them safer.
The poll of 2009 adults carried out between 10th and 11th September shows that only 23 per cent believe that Britain should replace Trident with an equally powerful nuclear missile shield. 40 per cent say that Britain should “retain a minimum nuclear system, but it should be less powerful and cost less than replacing Trident.” A further 23 per cent say Britain should give up nuclear weapons altogether.
The poll also shows that the number of people who think that the possession of nuclear weapons makes Britain safer has fallen from 44 per cent when considering the threat of the Cold War to 32 per cent thinking of the threat faced today or in the future. Thinking about the international issues that Britain might face in future decades, 25 per cent think that “continued possession of nuclear weapons” makes Britain less safe.
The poll comes just days after Greenpeace published evidence that the true cost of Trident could reach £97 billion. Meanwhile, the online campaigning organisation, 38 degrees, today launches a petition on Trident.
25 Responses to “Trident opposed by two-in-three”
RichBatsford
RT @38degress Two in three people oppose renewing Trident – read more @leftfootfwd http://bit.ly/dRQlt #38degrees
JRT
Richard Blogger:
My comments (I won’t call it analysis because my original comments weren’t long enough to qualify as analysis) WERE correct because they entirely concur with yours! I merely failed to express it very well, so my thanks to you for putting much more cogently what I was driving at. This refers to my first set of comments in which I – rather too strongly – ticked LFF off for distorting, in my view, the implications of their research, and asking questions which were evidently intended to do so.
As you say, the majority of the public want a nuclear force. The only means to have a credible nuclear force is via the Trident MISSILE system and the Vanguard class submarines. This is the reason why we acquired Trident; it’s the cheapest possible credible and largely independent nuclear weapons system we could have. I’m glad we both agree on that. Thus, the collorary of this poll is, in fact, that the majority of the public want Trident, even if they don’t know it!! LFF are being ‘economical with the truth’ and if they’re not aware of this then they are being rather dense. I wonder which? On your interesting point regarding refitting the Vanguards – perhaps, although this would be a foolishly short-sighted policy as it would cost more in the long-run surely as you’d need to refit them and then build the replacements anyway. Just the sort of policy this government is likely to take but then hopefully they’ll be out of office by the time the decisions are to be made. I’m not entirely hopeful their likely replacements will do better, but hope springs eternal in the breast of man…
On the topic of today’s announcement: (i) the Government has not announced reduction of the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet, merely that it would consider doing so in a certain set of circumstances. (ii) that would go no distance to reducing the number of UK nuclear warheads – i.e. our nuclear stockpile – merely the number of delivery systems. (iii) QED is clearly an ostensibly cost-saving measure and has little to do with really changing our nuclear posture, thank goodness (iv) I use the word ostensibly because reducing the submarine numbers by one will probably not save much money at all and it fails to factor in the hidden costs of not building a fourth submarine, which is different again from scrapping the existing fourth sub(v) it proves the point that the UK nuclear forces are NOT (triple underlined) a response to threat or a deterrent at all but a factor in the international power relationships which Britain has with other countries. It also shows that if we lose our nuclear deterrent we lose an enormously significant factor in that power relationship. (vi) the Americans, who have a vast nuclear arsenal, can afford, actually, they need, to trim theirs quite significantly – this would probably best be done by reducing the number of land-based ICBMs, air launched weapons etc. We can’t cut much because we have just about enough to make the whole thing viable in the first place, and building and maintaining three subs doesn’t cost much more than building four owing to diminishing returns to scale etc. That’s why the decision to build four submarines was made in the first place.
If you don’t comprehend the rationale behind our nuclear posture, then I suggest you go and read the historical sources on why we have them. As most people won’t bother to do this (sadly) you could do worse than listening to Prof Ron Smith’s comments on the Today Programme this morning.
Sallie
RT @38_degrees: Two in three people oppose renewing Trident – read more @leftfootfwd http://bit.ly/dRQlt #38degrees
JRT
Marcus – don’t look to the US for policy examples for us. We’re not reforming welfare here, this is about our international position; they’re starting from an entirely different base and with an entirely different set of conditions.
If we put our money where our threats are we’d spend approximately nothing on defence policy (although the paradox of that is we’d soon find that we’d have some threats to spend some money on – the Falklands War or 1939-1945 is a splendid example). We face no threats; defence policy hasn’t been about threats since 1945 and even before that there was a pretty…flexible relationship.
rwendland
Richard Blogger @ 21/4:27 pm:
The MOD says life extending the current Vanguard subs similar to the U.S. is impractical. Something to do with the reactors and/or steam generators corroding too fast I recall. If practical it would clearly be most sensible to life-extend, so keeping in step with the U.S. replacement cycle (assuming we want to keep WMDs). With the current plan half way thru the life-time of the Vanguard replacements the U.S. will replace Trident with another missile, which we will have to go along with. The U.S. have agreed that the Trident replacement will be compatible with a new missile tube we will use, but being out of step with the U.S. introduces risks and costs mid-life to our replacements.
One idea that I have seen no-one explore the practicality of, probably because the Royal Navy and BAE would hate it, is to retain the current Vanguard subs as a less functional limited mobility Trident platform until the U.S. enters its replacement program. That is without the nuclear propulsion functional, utilising the backup diesel and battery propulsion to keep them moving off-shore, sometimes submerged. This would mean Russia and Israel could probably succeed in a pre-emptive strike, but not less capable forces such as China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and maybe one day Iran. So it would be a partial deterrent. But it would be a lot cheaper and get us back into the U.S. replacement cycle. Put under this pressure the Navy/BAE/Rolls Royce would probably also find ways to life-extend the reactor systems!