Election debate and lies about Trident

Something caught my attention during the debate last Thursday. It was a big fat lie, uttered by both Cameron and Brown. Nothing new there you might say - what else are politicians supposed to do? But this concerns nuclear weapons, so as lies go it's pretty severe in its implications

It was during the part of the debate dealing with economic policy, and more specifically on defence cuts. Nick Clegg said that the Lib Dems would scrap the replacement for Trident, the submarine-launched nuclear missile system that the UK currently uses. (Frequently mistakenly referred to as 'scrapping Trident', it is actually the replacement for Trident that is up for the chop here.)

Brown and Cameron jumped on him instantly, saying that they would keep Britain's 'independent' nuclear deterrent. The operative word here is 'independent'.

But Trident is not independent. Not in the slightest. Because the satellite systems that are used to guide the missiles once launched are owned, and operated, by the USA. So all the Americans have to do is switch off the satellites and the Trident missiles would be about as much use as wet cabbage. They would be unable to launch, never mind reach a target. America therefore has an absolute veto over Britain's nuclear weapons. So in fact we don't have nuclear weapons at all.

Now Cameron and Brown are well-informed people. They know this fact very well. Trident gives us no independence, in fact it makes us entirely de-pendent. So when they told the public that this system was 'independent' they were lying.When your most powerful weapons system can be switched off like a TV set by a foreign power there's not much point to it - except to make you a hostage not so much to a foreign enemy but to a foreign friend. Or should that be 'friend'. Because how in blazes can you be independent when your strongest card is not held by you at all?

If we really wanted an 'independent' nuclear deterrent, one that serves the interests of this country and not one 5,000 miles away,  we should scrap the replacement for Trident and invest in a aircraft-launched nuclear delivery system like either the French frappe de force, or the one that Israel supposedly has. They don't rely on American satellites that don't belong to them. But they are no less independent for it.

Replacing Trident with a like-for-like system would cost the UK about £100 billion over the course of 10 years or so. Pretty serious money. Clegg's argument was that this was a Cold War-era system that was designed 'to flatten St Petersburg or Moscow', as he put it, and was therefore not suited to the new and uncertain era of globalised terrorism, falied states and proliferating nuclear technology. The whole point of having a submarine-based system was that it was undetectable (supposedly) and so couldn't be taken out by the Soviet Union's own missiles in  a surprised 'first strike'. Thus the 'deterrent'.

What Clegg tried to say was that scrapping Trident replacement is not equivalent to scrapping nuclear weapons. Why he didn't ram the point home, and for good measure accuse Cameron and Brown of putting our nukes in the pocket of a foreign power, at eye-watering expense, is beyond me. Perhaps he felt it was too inflammatory. Or maybe he wanted to talk less about it to avoid appearing weak on defence. But I think he just chickened out.