MPs vote to renew UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system
“The Government’s policy is to retain the Trident continuous at sea nuclear deterrent to provide the ultimate guarantee of our safety and build the new fleet of four Successor Ballistic Missile Submarines – securing thousands of highly-skilled engineering jobs in the UK”.
It also emerged after the vote that 58 of Scotland’s 59 MP’s voted against the renewal measure.
Asking for the fleet to removed from Scotland, the MPs said its continuing presence there would be another reason to seek a second independence referendum.
In her first address to the House of Commons since taking office last week following the European Union referendum, May warned that the threat from nuclear weapons was increasing and said it would be an “act of gross irresponsibility” to abandon the nuclear deterrent.
The prime minister gave the blunt reply during a parliamentary debate on the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons programme, which many suspect was staged by the government for the sole goal of drawing attention to the rift between Jeremy Corbyn and a majority of Labour MPs.
MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch Meg Hillier joined 140 Labour MPs by following the official party policy to renew the submarines.
He was, he said, “deeply concerned about the spiraling costs” of renewal, said that a nuclear deterrent was not the best response to new threats such as that posed by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), and urged the government to “step up to the plate and promote rapid nuclear disarmament” internationally.
“And we can not afford to relax our guard or rule out further shifts which would put our country in grave danger”.
But his leadership is under challenge and many MPs in his party approved the Trident upgrade. The Labour Party has to come to a collective decision and we have to do that by way of collecting evidence and considering it in a proper way.
Ms Thornberry is a close ally of Mr Corbyn and his constituency neighbour.
The Commons is set to vote on Monday on the £40billion renewal of the Trident programme with the motion set to pass, partly due to the splits in Labour.
“There is cross-party support, not just from the SNP, but from the Greens, from Scottish Labour, nearly every single one of Scotland’s MPs tonight will vote against Trident replacement”.
Meanwhile, the SNP’s leader in Westminster, Angus Robertson, had described Trident as “an immoral, obscene and redundant weapons system”.
Pressed whether she would be prepared to launch a nuclear attack and kill 100,000 innocent people, May said: “Yes”.
Mr Roache, who supported Mr Corbyn as leader, told BBC Radio 4’s The World at One: “The Labour Party have a clear policy”.