Labour ructions on Trident

It appears that not everyone agrees with Gordon Brown on the case for Britain's independent nuclear deterrent. The BBC reports:

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's World At One, Ms [Clare] Short accused Mr Brown of showing disrespect for "any kind of democratic process".

"It's part of his desperation that's so humiliating him to prove to the Blairites that he's as right-wing as Blair and therefore that they will keep their promise to hand over to him," she said.

Ms Short added: "It means a lot of people who were happy to see Brown take over as leader will now think there's got to be a contest and we're not willing to support him."

This is hugely encouraging. If there's one thing I, as a Labour sympathiser over many years, don't wish to see, it's a united Labour Party. My book Anti-Totalitarianism discusses at some length the debates on the British Left over 70 years on defence policy, and concludes that a Left that fails to take national security seriously is destined (and deserves) to lose. Clare Short's wing of the Labour Party frequently charged in the furious debates of the 1980s that the government of James Callaghan, just before it left office, had been responsible for commissioning Trident in the first place. This was, of course, absolutely true, and much to Callaghan's credit. The fact that (see the same BBC report) 1,700 delegates at the public sector union Unison's conference voted unanimously to oppose the renewal of Trident just goes to show how important it is that Labour's leadership pays such a forum no attention.

The British independent nuclear deterrent is a marginal part of our defence policy (our membership of Nato being the foundation of our defence), but there remains a good case for it in principle, and an overwhelming electoral argument for it. The electorate might in principle be won for a Gaullist defence policy - one that shuns alliances and is motivated by anti-Americanism - but it will not support a policy of unilateral disarmament. Much better, in that case, for Labour (and the Conservatives) to argue the case for Trident as a part of our defence capability rooted in collective security, than to allow the case for an independent deterrent to be left to isolationists and xenophobes such as UKIP or the BNP.