Parliament to vote on renewing Britain’s nuclear arsenal

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. May responded with a firm “yes” after SNP’s George Kerevan asked if she was “personally prepared to authorize a nuclear strike that can kill 100,000 innocent men, women and children?” She later told anti-Trident Green Party MP Caroline Lucas: “Sadly you and some members of the Labour party seem to be the first to defend the country’s enemies and the last to actually accept the capabilities that we need”.

Mr Corbyn questioned if the “weapons of mass destruction” act as a credible deterrent to the threats faced by the United Kingdom, adding he would not take a decision that “kills millions of innocent people” – a nod to his stance that he would not authorise the use of nuclear weapons.

Her government won the vote by 472 to 117.

It is believed that with or without the Labour Leader’s vote the motion to endorse the £31 billion Trident renewal plan will pass and the new generation of nuclear submarines will be in service before 2030.

Labour MPs, who had a free vote on the matter, openly contradicted their leader Jeremy Corbyn, in his opposition.

“The nuclear threat has not gone away; if anything, it has increased”, May said, referencing a newly assertive Russian Federation and a desire from countries including North Korea to acquire nuclear weapons in defiance of the worldwide community.

In the House of Common, lawmakers approved the construction of four new submarines to carry the existing Trident missile system and their nuclear warheads, at a cost of £41 billion (49 billion euros, $54 billion).

Around 60 percent of its MPs did not support leader Jeremy Corbyn’s opinion and voted in favor of the nuclear program.

Taking to the despatch box for the first time, she said the nuclear threat facing Britain has “increased”.

In the vote, 58 of Scotland’s 59 MPs voted against Trident renewal, with Scotland’s only Tory MP being the sole supporter.

The unprecedented current parliamentary divisions in the Labour Party, worse even than the early 1980s, were starkly on display yesterday as the House of Commons debated renewing the Trident nuclear deterrent.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, responded to May, saying that he does not “believe the threat of mass murder is a legitimate way to go about global relations”.

Labour MP for Newport West Paul Flynn was the only one of the region’s representatives to vote against the proposal to renew the programme.