“I do not believe the threat of mass murder is a good way of dealing with global relations”, Corbyn told parliament.
Advertisement
Britain needed to retain a nuclear deterrent which had been an insurance policy for almost 50 years, May said.
The debate on Trident opened with Theresa May’s first appearance at the dispatch box as Prime Minister.
Mr Corbyn replied: “He is well aware of what the policy was”.
Some 472 members supported the government’s motion, while 117 voted against – a majority of 355.
North Durham Labour MP Kevan Jones, a former defence minister, intervened in Mr Corbyn’s speech, saying: “He, like me, stood in May 2015 on a party policy agreed at our conference. for the renewal of continuous at sea deterrent”.
The statement said that “an ethics and a law based on the threat of mutual destruction – and possibly the destruction of all mankind – are self-contradictory” and that “here is urgent need to work for a world free of nuclear weapons”.
Opponents of Trident accused May of generating the debate so early into her leadership of the country to take advantage of the civil war now engulfing the main opposition Labour Party.
Ms May was challenged by the SNP’s George Kerevan, who asked: “Are you prepared to authorise a nuclear strike that could kill hundreds of thousands of men, women and children?”
Each of the four submarines carries a sealed “letter of last resort” in the prime minister’s hand, containing instructions to follow if the United Kingdom has been devastated by a nuclear strike and the government annihilated. As our Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) made clear, there is a continuing risk of further proliferation of nuclear weapons.
“And we can not afford to relax our guard or rule out further shifts which would put our country in grave danger”.
“We can not outsource the grave responsibility we shoulder for keeping our people safe”, she said, adding that scrapping the weapons would be “a gamble that would enfeeble our allies and embolden our enemies”.
Earlier, the head of the GMB trade union Tim Roache insisted 45,000 jobs around the country – many of them highly skilled – were dependent on the Trident programme going ahead.
Her office says May will say that “the nuclear threat has not gone away, if anything, it has increased”, and it would be reckless to abandon the country’s “ultimate safeguard”.
Many MPs – including some who have quit the front bench in protest at his leadership – were furious that he did not speak up for Labour’s official policy to back the renewal of the warheads.
Advertisement
He said: “It is not a great position for the Labour Party to be in, to be honest”.
