Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr Quatro
What good would it be to have a Scotland without England to the south?
To help the burned and radiated peoples as they cross over the border?
Fear the enemy by being stronger than they are ... without FBM's no restrike would take place. .
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Note, I said I was in
favour of keeping the UK deterrent, nor do I care where it is based, as long as it is retained.
What Labour's Scottish Branch Office (Scottish Labour is
not an independent political party) chooses to do is largely immaterial, as it can be overridden by the UK-wide Labour Party, as has already occured. The UK Labour Party rebelled against it's current leader, the pro-disarmament Jeremy Corbyn, by voting to retain Trident at the main party conference last year. To complicate matters further, Scottish Labour's current leader, Kezia Dugdale, is in favour of retaining the deterrent. So you have an almighty degree of confusion and lack of clear policy on the part of Her Majesty's Opposition, i.e, the Labour Party.
It can be summed up thus:
Scottish Labour (a branch of UK Labour) - Anti nuclear weapon, but has a pro nuclear weapon leader.
UK Labour (the main party) - Pro nuclear weapon, but has an anti nuclear weapon leader.
This is all a moot point, anyway, as the Conservative Party (which forms the current UK Government) has a majority in the House of Commons and many of the Labour Party's MP's are also in favour of keeping Trident. Therefore it's pretty certain that the Commons will vote in favour of retaining the deterrent and investing in Trident's successor.
The only thing that would scupper those plans is if you had a US President (can you say Trump? Considering the recent furor in the UK over recent comments from him, he'd be the most likely culprit.) who would block the UK's use of the actual
missiles. The warheads are UK produced, but the missile bodies themselves are shared with the US in a common pool. This is why it's not uncommon to see a UK Vanguard SSBN visiting Bangor in the US. All that would be required would be a Presidential order blocking the sharing of US resources with the UK and the UK would have warheads, but no way to deploy them.
Mike.