It isn't Ed Miliband 'fighting his own brother for the leadership' that will put Britain at risk, it's ideological Tory cuts
Whatever you think about the renewal of Trident, Labour are firmly committed to it. As the shadow defence secretary Vernon Coaker has unequivocally put it, ” We support renewal of Trident along with a renewed focus on multilateral disarmament”.
This is a long way from the Labour party of the early 1980s which was advocating unilateral disarmament.
And so the Conservative accusations today that Ed Miliband plans to scrap Trident in a deal with the SNP are plainly false. Or more accurately, they are a smear. It’s also a rather crude and personal one, focusing as it does (bizarrely) on Ed’s relationship with his brother David.
Labour should take heart from this. As the late Christopher Hitchens put it, “I always think it’s a sign of victory when they move on to ad hominem”.
Defence is a serious issue, but Tory claims of Labour ‘weakness’ display an astounding level of hypocrisy when the former have cut the military so severely in the past five years. Under current plans, by 2020 the Army will lose 20,000 soldiers, the Navy 6,000 personnel and the RAF 5,000. We are drastically winding down Britain’s defences based on the Tory mania for deficit reduction at any cost.
As the ex-US defence secretary Robert Gates put it last year:
“With the fairly substantial reductions in defence spending in Great Britain, what we’re finding is that it won’t have full spectrum capabilities and the ability to be a full partner as they have been in the past.”
Or closer to home, as the chief of the defence staff general Sir Nicholas Houghton put it in 2013:
“Unattended, our current course leads to a strategically incoherent force structure: exquisite equipment, but insufficient resources to man that equipment or train on it.
“This is what the Americans call the spectre of the hollow-force. We are not there yet; but across defence I would identify the Royal Navy as being perilously close to its critical mass in manpower terms.”
To be clear then: it isn’t Ed Miliband ‘fighting his own brother for the leadership’ that will put Britain at risk; it’s ideological Tory cuts.
James Bloodworth is the editor of Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
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25 Responses to “Trident: It’s ideological Tory cuts that are putting Britain at risk”
JAMES MCGIBBON
You are not covered by the USA shield as they do not have a shield.
Robert Robson
Why is “ideological” now a political insult? Surely it’s good for a party to believe in something, even if not everyone agrees with it? In addition, it’s no more idological to support the small state than the large state.
Maybe it’s just because you dislike conservative ideology – it’s fine to support social democratic ideology though.
Robert Robson
Charming. Remember though, the left’s moral high ground gives them the right to spew such needless insults. They’re all better people because they support higher state spending. They’re self-evidently better than us nasty and bitter conservatives because supporting less government intervention makes you an evil person who isn’t worth the left’s time debating with – so the petty insults are acceptable.
Leon Wolfeson
Blind ideology rather than an assessment of the facts is the problem.
Leon Wolfeson
You’re being a PC bigot, of course, talking about “the left” because of one person here, who is simply being rude.
The answer is…he’s rude. You’re ranting, frankly. Your Conservatives have dramatically increased government intervention in any number of areas, and are quite happy to keep blaming the poor for, er, being poor – spending vast amounts of cash on punishment.
Your austerity turns out to be expensive and anti-growth, just like every time it’s used anywhere. So! I’m quite happy to talk the contradictions in vulgar liberatarian’s arguments.