“I think a better assessment is that Trident is a New Labour talisman, borne out of the need to chase, or in this case avoid, Daily Mail headlines”

I’d say that’s pretty accurate, but I also think that whilst there were good electoral reasons for doing so back in the 90s, those reasons no longer exist. I’d say labour are at the stage where continually chasing daily mail voters has not only hit the point of diminishing returns, but is actively counter-productive and will lose votes.

The challenge for the labour leadership is to figure out when they started to haemorage votes, why that was the case and where did those voters go. The current leadership contest at the moment seems to me to be a completely unispiring attempt at figuring this out that bizzarely thinks the key to winning back these voters is to be more nasty to immigrants. Lets hope the debate can be turned.

Here is a hint to the labour party; you started to lose much of your support in 2003, now figure out why and where those supporters went.

Dianne,

I miss your appearances on This Week. Last night I fell asleep before blinky Balls was interviewed – though I did see him looking uncomfortable to be on the sofa at the start of the programme (perhaps he was thinking about how Andrew Neil quizzed you a couple of weeks ago).

Back to Trident – one of the advantages of never having been trusted enough to be in the cabinet is that you can criticise the decision making process of the New Labour years without thinking anything will stick to you.

“As leader of the Labour Party I would scrap Trident immediately, I would listen to the Generals and the public. I would use the money saved as part of my deficit reduction package, a package that wouldn’t punish women and the most vulnerable in society for the greed of a few bankers.”

Well, nothing predictable there, eh? And if the Generals were to tell you the opposite of what you would like to hear ……. the get out would be?

“Most crucially, I would stick to this position as I have done for 23 years…….”

Goodness me, has it been that long already? Of the bright eyed bunch elected for Labour in 1987 only you and Keith Vaz are left standing (or sitting). Here for Last Orders or some ermine like Lord Prescott, perhaps?

And most Generals and Unions are beginning to say the same thing – we don’t need it, we don’t want it, it’s too expensive and it’s irrelevant.

Of course Generals say that – Air Marshalls do as well. Trident is the Royal Navy’s baby.

“As leader of the Labour Party I would scrap Trident immediately …”

That might not work, wouldn’t you need to be in government to do that?

As Labour leader the most you could do would be to make scrapping Trident a policy.

And thus ensure that Labour has no chance of winning an election.

Also, the verb “out way” doesn’t exist in English – you may mean “outweigh”.

what do the polls say about support for Trident?

@5 The figures for scrapping Trident are a bit like those figures in polls about Tory immigration policy in 2005: everyone takes the populist position when it’s panted in the abstract, but when people are given the option of a political party seriously threatening to implement it in government, they think the less of that party.

I still don’t really get everyone saying that nucelar weapons are expensive. They’re the biggest bang for the least bucks that anyone has ever managed to produce.

That £2 billion a year is around and about the cost of a Division of the Army. Which gives you more bang, the nuclear subs or a division?

That £2 billion a year is around and about the cost of a Division of the Army. Which gives you more bang, the nuclear subs or a division?

Depends on whether you use them or not… Given that I can’t imagine any circumstance in which the actual use of nuclear weapons would be justified, we’re left arguing about the value of any putative deterrent effect. It’s not entirely clear to me whom we’re supposed to be deterring…

Mind you, I have a simple solution to the posited dilemma: get rid of Trident, and most of the Army (not to mention the Navy and the Air Force). It’s not like anybody would want to invade us – we dont’ have anything anybody might want that isn’t already for sale on the open market – and as a matter of principle, I don’t think we should be throwing our weight around on the international stage. It’s long past time that we accepted our status as a washed-up Imperial has-been and reduced our ambitions accordingly. It hasn’t done the Dutch or the Belgians any real harm.

However, I do recognise that this is not a popular position…

@8: A more realistic option would be to keep Trident and get rid of the rest of the armed services. The fact that we are not about to be invaded is a contingent one, not something you can deduce from first principles.

Mind you, I have a simple solution to the posited dilemma: get rid of Trident, and most of the Army (not to mention the Navy and the Air Force). It’s not like anybody would want to invade us

Agreed.

When was Swizerland last invaded?

And when was Afghanistan last conquered?

@9: Did you miss the bit where I said “I can’t imagine any circumstance in which the actual use of nuclear weapons would be justified”? That includes imminent (or indeed actual) invasion. ICBMs just aren’t much use in that sort of situation. It would be kinda like trying to hold off a mugger with a hand grenade.

“A more realistic option would be to keep Trident and get rid of the rest of the armed services.”

Indeed. Plus, all we really need is one missile trained on the City of London. Any state tries anything funny and it’s boom – there goes your Sovereign Weath Fund.

Well, you lost my unvote by using “geeky” as a perjorative over at the Guardian, Diane. What is this, my secondary school?

Tim? You believe that the bang for the buck is better than eradicating the world of weapons that could wipe out humankind? Is that the classical Liberal view?

Where the hell would be you daft market models if there isn’t any humans to play around with them?

If I thought that eradicating nuclear weapons were possible I’d be more in favour of getting rid of Trident. As I don’t think the former is possible, for they really do give the most immense military power cheaper than any other currently known weapons system, then I’m not.

Just as an example, if Iran’s going to get the bomb (and yes, I really do know enough about matters nuclear to know that there’s absolutely no other explanation for their desire to enrich uranium themselves than their desire to do so) then yes, I want that we have it too.

So we have to take it as read that nuclear proliferation is the UKIP/Classical Liberal/Liberal policy stance, because Iran just may get the bomb?

Cool beans.

But if that is the case, what are you going to cut to offset the balance, nukes are expensive, even if they do give best boom for pound, so that government stays out of the way of business so it can do its job in the free market? Or, should we then simply assume you are in favour of private business running the nuclear program?

France has nuclear weapons. Any nuclear attack on us will have serious implications for France, and so won’t happen.

Ergo, we can get rid of nukes as long as we do it before the French!

“r, should we then simply assume you are in favour of private business running the nuclear program?”

Skynet?

Skynet?

Sponsors of the New UKIP. Mises United.

I want that we have it too

Well we do. I don’t think anyone here has advocated total unilateral nuclear disarmament.

“nukes are expensive, even if they do give best boom for pound,”

Err, no, the second bit disproves the first. Nukes are of course cheap because they produce the most bang per pound.

Err, no, the second bit disproves the first. Nukes are of course cheap because they produce the most bang per pound.

I love the tongue in cheek approach, Tim. Boom per pound old love, bang would simply be a 1000lb bunker buster.

And, in your fantasy world of non-human as long as the things were delivered by robot – orgasmic.

Will the Nuclear proliferation of the Ukip lot be on the next election leaflets, Tim? You should run for London Mayor!

“Err, no, the second bit disproves the first. Nukes are of course cheap because they produce the most bang per pound.”

Dear me. OK, they’re not good value because the bang is unusable in any positive way.

So that’s what this “economics” stuff is all about, is it? A multi-million pound nuclear weapon is cheaper than a fire-cracker because it’s got more bang for the buck.

Well come November 5th I’ll save myself a quid or two and buy nuclear bombs for the kids. Thanks for the tip!

8 – Nah, we definitely need an army. The UN/EU are doing a reasonably good job of keeping us europeans from going to war with each other, but there’s no real guarantee that it’s going to work out in the long term. Especially when energy security starts to become more of a problem.

Nuclear weapons are pretty useless in the modern world, though. Since we don’t have any properly rational rogue states any more – they’re all run by religious nut-jobs – the MAD/deterrent argument no longer holds very well. That being the case, the best thing to pursue is multilateral disarmament, in an attempt to avoid proliferation. Walking out on Iran at every NNPT meeting while planning to refresh our nuclear arsenals and keep them at their current level is just… crazy.

“So that’s what this “economics” stuff is all about, is it? A multi-million pound nuclear weapon is cheaper than a fire-cracker because it’s got more bang for the buck.”

Err, yes…..100,000 houses for £2 billion is better than 30 houses for £2 billion. You know, more for less money is usually better.

No one ever, in any sense whatsoever, being willing to even think about invading the UK for £2 billion a year is better than one Armoured Division for a year, a division that may or may not stop someone from invading let alone think about it.

You know, more for less is good.

“Walking out on Iran at every NNPT meeting while planning to refresh our nuclear arsenals and keep them at their current level is just… crazy.”

I’m not all that sure. I agree my personal life experience is perhaps slightly different from the norm (of course, everyone’s personal life experience is different from everyone else’s) but I’ve sat in an office in Moscow where an official from Atomenergoexport was boasting, very excitedly, about how the Russians had just sold Iran a nuclear fuel recycling plant. That was back in the early 90s BTW.

The only possible reason Iran might want that is to produce material for a bomb. Just as the only reason for wanting their own enrichment plant is to want the bomb.

The NPT is, as is right and just, quite clear about having the right to civilian nuclear power. Great, go for it. But to enrich your own fuel, this costs a fortune. To reprocess your own fuel, this costs another. The only reason you would ever think about doing either/both is so that you can make HEU through enrichment or to extract the plutonium through reprocessing. Neither has anything to do with wanting to have civilian nuclear power stations.

You have noted that while we do have both, we built them to have the bomb? And that even though we enrich for other countries (like Japan) and reprocess for other countries (japan) we still lose a fortune on those parts of the process?

Iran is trying, Pakistan succeeded recently, N Korea has spent amounts that impoverish even their imprisoned helots even more to do so.
Yes, I’d love it if such things didn’t exist (although I’m sure the descendants of those US Marines, those descendants that exist precisely because the US Marines didn’t have to fight right into and through Japan in 1945 would disagree) but they do and they’re not going away.

Thus we should have some.

Thanks for that Tim. I’d reply at greater length, except that I’m feeling rather ill having eaten a pound of raw lard for dinner. Apparently it contains the most calories per penny of any food. More for less you know!

So let’s get this straight: libertarians/UKIP support spending £20,000,000,000 on keeping a weapon that no-one would ever use, but oppose the minimum wage and state spending on social security. Right?

And they wonder why people think they’re loonies…

@29: “So let’s get this straight: libertarians/UKIP support spending £20,000,000,000 on keeping a weapon that no-one would ever use”

That’s not a generally valid argument. The cold war was a military stalemate precisely because both NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries possessed nuclear weapons and because the NATO Alliance let it be known that it was prepared to resort to the use nuclear weapons in reponse to an armoured attack across the north German plain – a significant factor because of the overwhelming superiority in armour of Warsaw Pact countries. Hence, I was never a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

With the ending of the cold war, the military situation has changed completely. The threat now is from asymmetric warfare – such as 9/11, the bombing of the London Tube, from suicide attacks, from insurgency and from failed states. For those threats, the Trident missile system is effectively useless as a deterrent. I would add that I have similar reservations about the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) Programme:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10654822

Thanks for that Tim. I’d reply at greater length, except that I’m feeling rather ill having eaten a pound of raw lard for dinner. Apparently it contains the most calories per penny of any food. More for less you know!

That … was … funny! LOL

@30

But that’s precisely my point. The age of MAD (mutually assured destruction) is over and as you say the threat is now from asymmetic warfare and suicidal terrorists. Therefore Trident is an unnecessary and very expensive cost. Plenty of first-world rich liberal democracies do just fine without nuclear weapons (Germany, for example).

@30:

Among emerging threats, I (stupidly) overlooked cyber warfare:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwarfare

That is potentially very important and Trident missile system won’t be much use, partly because it can be obscure as to where cyber attacks have originated and partly because the internet was designed to survive a nuclear strike.

“Thanks for that Tim. I’d reply at greater length, except that I’m feeling rather ill having eaten a pound of raw lard for dinner. Apparently it contains the most calories per penny of any food. More for less you know!”

Boom! Headshot!

“Thanks for that Tim. I’d reply at greater length, except that I’m feeling rather ill having eaten a pound of raw lard for dinner. Apparently it contains the most calories per penny of any food. More for less you know!”

Ain’t all that long ago that people did eat bread and dripping. Being poor they were looking for the most calories per penny…..

“So let’s get this straight: libertarians/UKIP ”

Snigger. No, I’m not the official spokesman for either group. I’m just me, remember?

“Ain’t all that long ago that people did eat bread and dripping. Being poor they were looking for the most calories per penny…..”

I don’t eat it, though? Why is that? Is it because your concept of economics is painfully oversimplified? Hey, let’s give every soldier a nuclear warhead! And the police! That, by definition, is the most cost-effective way of kitting them out as possible!

“I’m not the official spokesman for either group”

What with writing embarrasing horseshit like you have on this thread, I’m not altogether surprised.

Tim – Iran are indeed blatantly taking the proverbial when it comes to complying with the NNPT. But so are we. And when we and they can’t talk to each other even at gatherings designed for people with, and without, nuclear weapons to talk to each other, neither of those facts will change.

/Why/ do N. Korea, Iran, Pakistan, etc want nuclear weapons so much? To engage in an orgy of armageddon and wipe out the infidels and jews? Or to protect themselves from rogue western states with the self-same technology?

“That £2 billion a year is around and about the cost of a Division of the Army. Which gives you more bang, the nuclear subs or a division?”

Oh dear oh dear.

The nuke does the following:

Explodes and kills large numbers of people
Provides employment for americans in marginal constituencies, and a few british techies
Historically speaking prevents another state invading you

The division does the following:

Has the capability of killing large numbers of people
Provides employment and training in mechanical stuff for working class kids in disadvantaged areas
Provides employment for thick toffs via officer training
Generates secondary employment via production of equipment
Allows you not only to defend yourselves against invaders, but also allows you to invade other countries and steal their natural resources
You can even do peacekeeping operations with it!
You can also do anti-terrorist ops with reduced civillian casualtiues
It provides entry level employment for people who go on to become special forces – which also do far more than nukes can do.

Try this recent piece in The Economist:

Are the mouse and keyboard the new weapons of conflict?
http://www.economist.com/node/16478792?story_id=16478792&fsrc=rss

Why is retaining Trident so important to the right ?
There are much cheaper ways to deliver the damn thing.
At least we should have a debate about the system.
Also why do we need it ?
Who is going to attack us with an arsenal of nuclear weapons,
We are more likely to be attacked by a dirty bomb, release of small pox or Ebola virus, nerve gas or a computer virus to the stock exchange.
On the subject of defence/.
I am surprised that the right wing libertarians have not suggested a radical free market way of defending the country
Get rid of the armed forces and employ highly trained mercenaries to sort out any problems or conflicts.
It was the 15th century way.
Christ you, lot complain about other state employers but allow a public service in which officers (public servants) have their own servants (stewards and batmen). All at the public expense.

“Get rid of the armed forces and employ highly trained mercenaries to sort out any problems or conflicts.”

We do: we’ve abolished conscription remember, we no longer use slaves to do it.

We do: we’ve abolished conscription remember, we no longer use slaves to do it.

I thought you believed all state workers are slaves and needed to be freed.
Come on , no marines sent to Afghanistan just paid mercenaries

“We do: we’ve abolished conscription remember, we no longer use slaves to do it.”

Are you the real Tim W? The normal one isn’t anywhere near this ignorant and flippant.

He said mercenaries; that is, ad hoc professional soldiers hired on demand as opposed to a standing army, conscripts or rawly recruited nationals. It’s not simply a slaves/mercs dichotomy. Although coming from the guy who thinks we should replace all firearms with nuclear weapons for economic reasons, I shouldn’t be all that surprised.

@Rhys Williams:

There are already mercenaries in Iraq, according to this over around 20,000 private “security contractors”.

@Tim W:

You might not be UKIP’s “official” spokesman but you certainly sing from the same hymn sheet. Check their manifesto – they support spending billions on Trident while continuing their anti-welfare state campaign.

“I thought you believed all state workers are slaves and needed to be freed.”

Tee hee….no. Taxpayers are sometime treated as slaves, this is true, forced to pay tribute to keep MPs in cheap booze and the like, this is true (if rhetorically overblown).

But no, as Milton Friedman pointed out to General Wesrmoreland when on the Commission that abolished the draft. Conscripts are slaves, forced to risk their lives at the risk of being shot if they refuse.

Paid soldiers are mercenaries….as are paid professors, paid metal dealers and paid everything else.

“Of course, Meckling wasn’t the only hero. Milton Friedman was very persuasive. One of Meckling’s favorite stories, which his widow, Becky, recalled in a recent interview, was of an exchange between Mr. Friedman and General William Westmoreland, then commander of all U.S. troops in Vietnam. In his testimony before the commission, Mr. Westmoreland said he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. Mr. Friedman interrupted, “General, would you rather command an army of slaves?” Mr. Westmoreland replied, “I don’t like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves.” Mr. Friedman then retorted, “I don’t like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries. If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.” ”

Worth noting that Alan Greenspan (yes, that one) was also on the commission and also, with Friedman, against the draft from the beginning.

“we should replace all firearms with nuclear weapons for economic reasons”

Noooo, didn’t actually say that. What I did say was that I cannot understand all these people who keep telling us that nuclear weapons are very expensive. They’re not, which is why the military like them. They’re very cheap in fact, the biggest bang for the buck.

Saying that something is cheap though is not the same as saying that it’s always appropriate, is it?

Nor does pointing out that something is cheap preclude there being other arguments against having or using it: I’m entirely open to all sorts of other arguments about nuclear weapons. Up to and including being entirely happy to get rid of them all if we can in fact (as above) get rid of them all.

My original point though was the quite simple: if you want a bloody great big national way of telling another nation to fuck off then nuclear weapons are a very cheap way of doing that.

“Tee hee….no. Taxpayers are sometime treated as slaves, this is true, forced to pay tribute to keep MPs in cheap booze and the like, this is true (if rhetorically overblown).”

‘Slaves’ is pushing it, but it’s a reasonable complaint (and a reasonable caveat as well). You seem to be back to normal.

“But no, as Milton Friedman pointed out to General Wesrmoreland when on the Commission that abolished the draft. Conscripts are slaves, forced to risk their lives at the risk of being shot if they refuse.

Paid soldiers are mercenaries….as are paid professors, paid metal dealers and paid everything else.”

Right, here’s the thing. He’s using ‘mercenaries’ to mean what it means in the normal military sense. You deliberately mishearing it and treating it as an allegory is not particularly helpful. He’s making a genuine point, so why not answer it instead of accidently-on-purpose pretending not to understand?

“Right, here’s the thing. He’s using ‘mercenaries’ to mean what it means in the normal military sense.”

Using it in that sense, well, we’ve tried it. Didn’t work all that well in the end. That’s why we give the State the monopoly of legal violence: because “mercenaries”, war bands, competing groups of thugs with weaponry, we’ve worked out that they don’t actually work very well.

Yes, this does mean Blackwater just as much as the 15th century Italian companies or the Barons’ feudal levies. Indeed, I’ve often used exactly the example as being one of the entirely legitimate reasons for there to be a State, that there be such a monopoly of legal organised violence.

“Noooo, didn’t actually say that.”

I know. It was the logical extrapolation of your argument. Reducto ad absurdum and all that.

“What I did say was that I cannot understand all these people who keep telling us that nuclear weapons are very expensive. They’re not, which is why the military like them. They’re very cheap in fact, the biggest bang for the buck.”

Only because you seem to think that the main return gained from the outlay is ‘bang’. It’s not. That’s not even the primary purpose of nuclear bombs (you mention their primary purpose in your own post).

Economically speaking, we have to work out the cost/benefit of having a conventional military force compared to the cost/benefit of being able to use nukes as an unspoken threat before we can decide which is cheaper.

“My original point though was the quite simple: if you want a bloody great big national way of telling another nation to fuck off then nuclear weapons are a very cheap way of doing that.”

But that’s all they can do (apart from malicious and useless attacks to allow you to “take them down with me”). Soldiers can do other things, like win wars, fight without starting nuclear armaggedon, deal with enemies who don’t conveniently get together in an area the size of a nuclear blast radius with no innocents nearby… that sort of thing.

“Soldiers can do other things”

Which is why we have a 6 division army AND nuclear weapons……

“Using it in that sense, well, we’ve tried it. Didn’t work all that well in the end. That’s why we give the State the monopoly of legal violence: because “mercenaries”, war bands, competing groups of thugs with weaponry, we’ve worked out that they don’t actually work very well.

Yes, this does mean Blackwater just as much as the 15th century Italian companies or the Barons’ feudal levies. Indeed, I’ve often used exactly the example as being one of the entirely legitimate reasons for there to be a State, that there be such a monopoly of legal organised violence.”

So why not just say that in the first place?

As it happens, I’m inclined to agree with you. Private armies make me very nervous indeed. Knowing how evil private interests can be when they’ve got their eye on the profit line, I’m loath to tell them they’re allowed to kill people (and no doubt encourage senseless slaughter by giving them the equivalent of sales targets: take Moscow within the week and you get a $10 million milestone payment).

On the other hand, maybe enough oversight and transparency could eliminate that while still outsourcing a lot of the costs.

“Which is why we have a 6 division army AND nuclear weapons……”

Yup. But can we afford them both? Building even more nukes while ripping apart public services does seem reminiscent of the military-industrial complex.

“Yup. But can we afford them both?”

Which brings us back to nuclear weapons being cheap. We would need 8, 10, 12, 15 army divisions to have a great big “fuck off or die” sign over the UK.

Nuclear weapons do that cheaper…..

“Nuclear weapons do that cheaper . . ”

How come America’s formidable nuclear arsenal prevent 9/11 then?

The option to conduct effective cyberwarfare is even cheaper than renewing the Trident missile system.

It used to be said that generals and the rest of the military hierarchy are forever learning and gaming how to fight the last conflict better. Evidently, they still are. MAD in Europe thankfully produced a stalemate during the cold war but the setting has changed. Asymmetric warfare prevails now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare

“Which brings us back to nuclear weapons being cheap. We would need 8, 10, 12, 15 army divisions to have a great big “fuck off or die” sign over the UK.”

I’d say otherwise: considering our proximity to another nuclear country, we’re not going to get nuked unless either M.A.D. kicks off or a rogue terrorist gets hold of nuclear bombs. In neither case would our own arsenal do anything to help.

It seems more realistic that nukes help protect us from conventional attack, but I reckon fairly powerful armed forces plus the general international community should be enough to achieve that. If you want to reduce our armed forces down to the equivalent of the National Guard, then yes, you might need a nuke or two.

What’s so worrying is the absence of convincing signs that ministers or the military hierarchy are getting to grips with the rising threats from either asymmetrical warfare and subversion or cyberwarfare, all of which are relatively inexpensive options for present or prospective enemies of Britain to engage in. Moreover, the Trident missile system isn’t an effective deterrent against these threats.