I welcome Sir Keir’s bold stance – but will the rest of his party?

Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘castiron commitment’ to maintaining Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent will be welcomed by millions of voters. in his article in today’s Mail, the Labour leader is unequivocal in his support for four planned Dreadnought nuclear submarines, which from the 2030s will carry the new generation of Trident nuclear missiles.

Sir Keir’s pledge is not strictly new, since John Healey, the admirable shadow defence secretary, said in 2021 that Labour’s support for retaining nuclear weapons was ‘non-negotiable’.

But such a forthright commitment, coming as it does from Sir Keir himself, and containing an assurance that all four submarines will be built in Barrowin-Furness in Cumbria, carries particular authority as it seems likely that Labour will form the next government of the United Kingdom.

His endorsement of Britain’s fledging AUKUS defence alliance with Australia and the United States (probably only possible because of the Brexit he so obsessively tried to thwart) is also encouraging. Dare one say that, in this article, he sometimes sounds like a sensible Tory leader?

Sir Keir evidently realises that we live in an increasingly dangerous world. russia has an enormous stockpile of nuclear weapons, which it is not shy of threatening to use, while China is steadily increasing its number of nuclear warheads.

Possession of a credible independent nuclear deterrent is as close as it is possible to get to an ultimate guarantee of safety in a world in which russia and China – and probably soon a nuclear-armed iran – are throwing their weight around.

Who can doubt that russia would have thought more carefully before invading Ukraine if in the early 1990s Kyiv hadn’t voluntarily given up the nuclear arsenal it inherited when the Soviet Union fell apart?

So the Labour leader should be congratulated. He is a man who sometimes likes to sit on the fence, or to jump from one side to the other so adroitly that one doesn’t always know exactly where he has landed. Not so in relation to Britain’s nuclear deterrent.

Yet, cheering though Sir Keir’s article is, i don’t believe that the argument within Labour about nuclear weapons is entirely closed. it is no exaggeration to say that, whether or not Britain should have its own nuclear deterrent, has been the most contentious issue for the party over the past 70 years.

Sir Keir is correct to mention in his piece that it was the Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee, supported by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, who set up Britain’s nuclear programme in Labour’s post-war government.

What he understandably glosses over is the long-term hostility of the Labour Left to Britain’s nuclear deterrent. in 1957, when Labour was in opposition, Left-wingers tried to persuade the party that Britain should get rid of its nuclear weapons.

Leftist firebrand Aneurin Bevan astounded colleagues by arguing that, if the unilateralists got their way, they would send a future Labour foreign secretary ‘naked into the conference chamber’. The motion was defeated.

But the issue continued to divide the party. Before the 1964 general election, Labour leader Harold Wilson questioned whether Polaris, then Britain’s main nuclear system, was either independent or a deterrent.

Nonetheless, once he became PM Wilson gave Polaris his support.

Under the leadership of Michael Foot, who had been a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Labour fought the 1983 election on a unilateralist platform. its manifesto, which contained other unpopular policies, was justly described by one of its rightwing MPs as ‘the longest suicide note in history’.

After losing the 1987 election with Neil Kinnock at the helm, Labour abandoned unilateralism. But the party didn’t wholeheartedly embrace Britain’s nuclear deterrent until Tony Blair became its leader.

Yet in 2006 Blair faced one of the biggest Commons rebellions of his period in office over his plans to renew Trident, with 88 Labour MPs voting against the government. Even in the heyday of Blairism, Labour’s unilateralists hadn’t gone away.

WHEN Jeremy Corbyn, a former CND stalwart, became Labour leader in 2015, the argument again tilted strongly towards unilateralism. Whilst the party didn’t formally adopt it as a policy, Corbyn’s feelings were plain. He had declared in 2015 that he would never use nuclear weapons.

Labour’s history on this issue is therefore a very tangled one, and it would be naive to suppose that Sir Keir’s unequivocal stance marks the end of the argument.

i’m sure it hasn’t escaped his notice that in 2015 Scottish Labour delegates overwhelmingly voted to scrap the UK’s Trident nuclear missile system, which is based at Faslane on the Clyde, though the party’s 2017 election manifesto backtracked on the undertaking.

The Scottish National Party has said that in the event of independence it will stop nuclear submarines being based at Faslane. Since there aren’t currently any practicable alternatives, no UK government could accept such an outcome.

Will Scottish Labour campaign during the forthcoming election to retain the nuclear facilities at Faslane? it seems unlikely. Labour in Scotland won’t be singing from Sir Keir’s hymn sheet on this matter.

AS For his own backbench MPs, in the event of his becoming prime minister they won’t all be backing Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent if the past is any guide. However, he can probably expect the support of a future Labour Cabinet, and in particular of the prospective defence secretary, John Healey.

My point is that, much as i welcome Sir Keir Starmer’s bold article, he doesn’t speak for his entire party.

Nevertheless, the positive, patriotic tone of his piece is bound to unsettle the Tories. Whilst there is no doubt about their commitment to our nuclear deterrent, the seriousness with which rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are taking the defence of the realm at a time of crisis can be justly questioned.

if Sir Keir Starmer undertook to increase the share of GDP that Britain spends on defence to 2.5 per cent and then 3 per cent – something this Government has incomprehensibly refused to do – he really would outflank the Tories on what is supposed to be one of their core issues.

For true Conservatives, defence is of paramount importance. Far more important than party, of course.

The storm clouds are gathering. in articulating the need for the British independent nuclear deterrent, and his complete commitment to it, Sir Keir Starmer will appeal to many who have so far doubted him.