A statement of this nature becomes political, via a very short route. To pretend otherwise is unrealistic and naive. There is no such animal as a non-political statement, at the level Houghton operates at.
The policies of the Labour party are not created and changed by the party leader alone. There is an internal process. The leader (or anyone else) can propose changes from time to time, and all party leaders do. Those proposals are considered by the party. Some are accepted, some are not. The defence policy of the Labour party is and remains that Britain should have (and potentially use) a nuclear deterrent. Mr Corbyn disagrees with that policy, apparently, and has proposed changing it. Such a change has not yet been considered, much less adopted. Most likely it will never be adopted. Ms Eagle, the shadow Defence Secretary, has merely restated what the position actually is. There is no question of "over-ruling".
I agree, which is why, although Houghton has come very close to the line, he has not crossed it, IMHO.
I wouldnt say Her Majesty is a parasite, she has dedicated 63 years to her job and IMO its a job that I certainly wouldn't want. The Royals do work hard and have very busy schedules. 50p per head per year is a small price to pay to keep the Heritage alive. Our Monarchy can be traced back for millennia, I for one am very proud to have a Monarchy. Would much prefer that than President Cameron or god forbid President Corbin. Monarchy us here to stay, THE END God Save the Queen
The fascist regime They made you a moron Potential H-bomb God save the queen She ain't no human being There is no future In England's dreaming
I have to agree. Whilst it is easy to poke fun at the Royals the constitutional monarchy that we all live under is probably better than a republic with Napoleon as President. (That last bit is a reference to Animal Farm btw)
But who is it a deterrent against? All those other countries that have proven nuclear weapons? That's a small list: China, France, Russia, United States and the UK. You can expand that list to include India, Pakistan and North Korea if you want as they have all conducted nuclear tests. But which one of those could hit us with a nuclear strike? That's easy: France, US (weapons based in Germany and across Europe, including their own in the UK) and Russia. I think we can safely rule out France, and possibly the US (unless it's an accident...) so that just leaves Russia. So what's the likelyhood of Russia launching a few nukes? I don't know. Maybe they will because, after all, they don't give a shit about the UK as they can come over here and murder their own citizens without recourse. At which point, we've not won. We've lost. We've lost everything. The entire UK would be decimated with a few tactical strikes and you wouldn't be able to live there for decades, probably centuries and maybe even thousands of years. If you weren't taken out in the initial strike then you would have the choice to inflict the same damage on another nation for Mutually Assured Destruction... and that's where it all goes a bit wrong... The detterent aspect makes the following assumptions: 1. You launch the missiles to ensure that the agressor cannot return fire; the second strike. If this cannot be assured, the agressor strikes back and you die. 2. You will always be able to detect a launch, and make and never make a false detection. You will always be able to tell where that launch came from (Russian-China border?) to enable you to retaliate appropriately. If not you could make the first strike, and the recipient strikes back and you die. 3. Nobody is able to corrupt the command chain and launch a strike without the correct authorisation otherwise they could make a first strike, or self target and you would die. 4. You do not have a the ability to defend yourself from a nuclear attack, such as with interception equipment or providing adequate shelter systems, and so you die from a first strike. Don't pull the terrorist "excuse" either as they don't all reside in one country, with no innocent civillians living among them, which makes it impossible to direct a strike on them. So have a real think about exactly how well the "deterrent" argument stacks up!
That's a good list of assumptions, although in the case of nr. 1, it's important to note that we'd never expect to survive a first strike against us - the whole point of MAD is the mutual assured destruction! Before Polaris, the V-bomber pilots were told that if they ever had to deploy, and survived, there'd be no point in returning to the UK, even if they had enough fuel to do so. They are assumptions that are reasonable ones to make though. What is more debatable about the nuclear deterrent argument is its validity as a way of protecting against some form of future invasion or blackmail - are there really any circumstances where we would make a first strike? The whole point though is that nobody knows (except those who do, who are not allowed to say). We could add Iran (given enough time, perhaps) and Israel (some say...) to the list, although Israel would be as unlikely as France to attack us (but things can change, so it's never safe to assume who an aggressor might be in 20 years' time). I'm sure China could strike anywhere in the world too (I'd be surprised if they have no submarine launch system). But it's the terrorist threat which is now the biggest flaw in the strategy, because although "they don't all live in one country" is a problem (the collateral damage isn't really, not when considering retaliation for a nuclear strike) a much larger one is that they would not care in the least if we were to vapourise them (suicide bombing being their favoured approach) because then they would be martyrs.
But MAD is only one nuclear strategy and isn't necessarily the one that the current (or future) Government would use. If you could achieve a perfect First Strike to ensure there was no Second Strike, then you could win*... but it does mean that you would need to press the button first, and getting back on topic, that is the bit which Corbyn has said that he, personally, is not prepared to do. *but see caveats as above!
If Japan had nuclear weapons during WW2 would the US have been quite so keen on using theirs twice? IMO, yes they would..... ......because at that time nobody had really experienced or understood the implications of what the nuke weapons would do. However, I'm quite sure it would be different now.........The USA certainly wouldn't want one dropped on them regardless how quickly they could get in a first strike.
MAD requires a survivable Second Strike capability to deter anyone from launching a First Strike. Trident does that. We don't know who we might have to deter in the future. Therefore we keep Trident and plan on a replacement. Just because a terrorist nuclear attack is possible, but unlikely for now, and there may not be a clearly defined target for a Second Strike, that does not alter the above. If Japan, Germany or the Soviets had developed nuclear weapons first in WWII we can safely assume that they would have used them. At the end of WWII there was a strong argument for attacking the Soviets before they developed a similar capability. Common sense (?) prevailed, the Soviets developed a nuclear capability and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction emerged. All I can say is I am glad that the USA won the race. We can't put the genie back in the bottle and we have to live with the world as it is and not how we would like it to be; although we can work to try and improve it. Simple really.
