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.
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In the vote, 58 of Scotland’s 59 MPs voted against Trident renewal, with Scotland’s only Tory MP being the sole supporter.
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.
Britain’s newly appointed Prime Minister Theresa May said on Monday her country could not give up its nuclear defence amid security threats posed by some states possessing nuclear weapons and others seeking to get lethal weapons. 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”.
Jeremy Corbyn, who supports scrapping Trident, allowed Labour MPs a free vote on the issue.
Labour MPs nodded glumly.
British lawmakers are due to vote Monday on whether to replace the country’s fleet of nuclear-armed submarines, a powerful but expensive symbol of the country’s military status.
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.
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.
Meanwhile Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a long-standing opponent of nuclear weapons, came under fire from his backbenchers over his opposition to Trident. “Is she personally prepared to authorise a nuclear strike that can kill 100,000 innocent men, women and children?”
Mr Corbyn, a lifelong supporter of unilateral disarmament, voted against renewal, while his deputy, Tom Watson, voted in favour and his defence spokesman Clive Lewis abstained.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales said in a statement ahead of the vote that they prayed that the decision taken by parliament would include the intention to “complete the elimination” of nuclear weapons.
John Woodcock, in whose Barrow and Furness constituency the new boats will be built, said: “For the official opposition to have a free vote on a matter of such strategic national importance is a bad indictment of how far this once great party has fallen”.
He said: “We’re forced to accept that the refusal to accept the established policy of the Labour party and to acknowledge the achievements of the greatest Labour government is not just a knowing embrace of electoral defeat, but a very real, a very studied and a very determined desire to split this Labour party”. Corbyn said adding that he “would not take a decision that kills millions of innocent people”.
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The vote, won with a majority of 355 votes, approves the manufacture of four replacement submarines at an estimated cost of £31bn.
