Can anyone help me out here? STV are quoting the new Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale as having made this baffling statement on nuclear weapons -
"I'm proud of the fact that my party is a party of nuclear disarmament. More warheads were abandoned under Labour than in any other country in recent history."
Not according to this website, they weren't. Britain is estimated to have had 203 nuclear warheads when Labour took office in 1997 - and 225 when they were ejected in 2010. I'm sure that Kezia thinks she must mean something, so does anyone have a clue how a net INCREASE of 22 warheads somehow represents "more warheads abandoned than in any other country in recent history"? To put it in perspective, Russia had 40,000 warheads in the late 1980s, and has now reduced that to around 5000. At the other end of the scale, South Africa had a small nuclear weapons system that was totally scrapped at the end of the apartheid years.
The only minor nod to disarmament during the Blair/Brown years was the ditching of the RAF's nuclear capability - which was very modest compared to Trident, although ironically it was the only part of the arsenal that could be genuinely called "independent", ie. not dependent on the Americans. Since the late 90s, the whole idea of an "independent nuclear deterrent" has been something of a fiction.
Kezia's broader point will raise a wry smile -
"I think the way to [disarm] is together on a multilateral basis. I recognise, however, there are people in the Labour Party and there are people who desperately want to support and join the Labour Party that take a different view. So why can't you have a situation where we're not afraid to debate these ideas?"
Translation : If Jeremy Corbyn becomes leader, I need an elegant way of reversing official policy without losing face. But if by any chance Corbyn is stopped, we'll have our "debate" and carry on as before.
Note that in the navy's arsenal there are also nuclear warhead torpedoes and nuclear depth charges.
ReplyDeleteNot for a couple of decades now, they were all superseded by newer conventional tech.
DeleteThere are 5 Trident submarines. Each submarine has 16 silos. Each missile has 3 independently targetable warheads, so 48 per sub times 5 equals 240. It makes no logistical sense to believe that there are no spares.
DeleteWith Labour and oor Kezia it is what they say at any particular time, it doesn't need to be the truth. The trouble is that Labour are allowed to make statements which go unchallenged in our biased press. This is the problem Labour faces, until someone actually challenges them they will continue to think that this behaviour is acceptable and that the voters are completely stupid. I have no doubt this will be the death of them. (hopefully)
ReplyDeleteworth noting that RAF bases (e.g. Machrihanish) always had senior US Air Force staff present to sign off on WE177 etc. i.e. not independent. See wikipedia articles (and cited references) for "Nuclear weapons and the United Kingdom", "WE.177".
ReplyDeleteWE.177 were dismantled in the 90's.
Yet another illustration of Kezia's very relaxed aquaintance with the truth.
ReplyDeleteYet another illustration of Kezia's very relaxed aquaintance with the truth.
ReplyDeleteDugdale is a political mess. She will say anything, nearly always contradicting herself, if there is a chance of being heard. Desperate desperate desperate.
ReplyDeleteIf indeed only 5000 or so votes were cast for Dipity Dug, is it not a bit strange that the UK membership is supposedly 3 times what it was? You would reasonably expect a uniform increase in numbers to at least wash over Scotland. Yet they are not crowing about SLAB membership, and the number of voters "enthused to join" cant be that enthused as they didny vote for Kezia or Ken.
ReplyDeleteThere's something dodgy about the numbers..
Exactly she has no personal feelings on any political subject. She will agree with the machine end of. If the machine has a new controller, she is reprogrammed by the machine operator.
ReplyDeleteThis is ethereal vacuous truth about modern mainstream British politics. That's why when she try s to do off message thinking. It comes out as illogical babble.
Example:" I want the House Of Lords in Glasgow because Glasgow was yes city,Scotland voted no and Glasgow should have the second chamber." Yep she really said that folks.
Dugdale has highlighted that all British Labour in Scotland can do is "Have a debate".
ReplyDeleteThe real decisions are taken by head office in London and rarely have anything to do with what is good for Scotland.
Exactly she has no personal feelings on any political subject. She will agree with the machine end of. If the machine has a new controller, she is reprogrammed by the machine operator.
ReplyDeleteThis is ethereal vacuous truth about modern mainstream British politics. That's why when she try s to do off message thinking. It comes out as illogical babble.
Example:" I want the House Of Lords in Glasgow because Glasgow was yes city,Scotland voted no and Glasgow should have the second chamber." Yep she really said that folks.
As an aside, I find the kind of rhetoric that accompanies the nuclear debate self-defeating. There's a certain side of the anti-Trident campaign that seems to find it impossible to acknowledge that someone can be pro-disarmament but think we should keep Trident until a multilateral deal can be agreed.
ReplyDeleteI completely understand if people don't agree with that argument. I'm not even saying I agree with it. But we need to stop acting as if anyone who has a different opinion on how we get to disarmament is pro-nuclear weapons. It's a completely legitimate perspective to think you lose leverage by voluntarily disarming when other states are still pursuing nuclear programmes and I'm genuinely sick of people trying to shout anyone with a different view down instead of engaging with the issue openly like adults.
A bit more dispassionate "debate" is actually what's needed on this subject instead of populist rhetoric.
Totally disagree. Multilateralism is an utter sham. If Labour believe in multilateral disarmament, when did the last Labour government even propose sitting down with France and China (countries with comparable arsenals) to negotiate mutual reductions, let alone take part in such negotiations?
DeleteScratch the surface of "multilateral disarmers", and at best what they really mean is that they don't propose any increase on our supposedly "minimum" deterrent.
Look if you believe having weapons that can destroy mankind are legitimised by multilateralism. Then fine.
ReplyDeleteHowever they are immoral if you believe that life is precious. Some things are just wrong! Like murder. It's like a murderer protesting innocence because he killed another man with a knife. I don't carry a knife but there are countless neds who do. Should all people carry knives because a minority of others do? Until the minority give up knives do the majority just sit on their hands and sigh.
This multilateral disarmament is just a an excuse for doing nothing in your own backyard. If one less country has nuclear weapons it will make the world safer. If another country gets nuclear weapons it will make it less safe. That's what we call the arms race.
The difference is knives have a purpose in the right hands. Nuclear weapons can only do one thing and that's destroy mankind.
Scotland getting rid of weapons is not small minded or daft. It's making a statement that we want no part in the arms race.
Actually nuclear bombs could be used to make tunnels, channels and massive holes. They might even be useful in accelerating space craft to near lightspeed.
DeleteI don't think the ability to make holes contaminated by radiation is actually that useful.
DeleteDepends on how dirty it is.
DeleteActual facts and Kezia does not compute and never has done even before she was elected as an MSP, just read her past blogs and the amount of cherry picked data they contained as SNP Baaadd is what drives her.
ReplyDeleteShe lied in the referendum and still sticks to the lies she told then, no integrity whatsoever.
Kez believes her own lies like at least half the labour lot. It's disgraceful that they also think the electorate should also believe their lies to keep them living very comfortable and expenses driven lives, while many are destitute in this rich ukok. Labour disgust me more as each day passes, unfortunately, their followers will continue to support them even though they have done very little for the voters all these years.
ReplyDeleteConlabour, no thanks.
Labour going wobbly on nuclear weapons as a result of the rise of the far left - who are completely opposed to their own country having them (whilst presumably not too bothered about Mother Russia having a few thousand stashed away).
ReplyDeleteIt's now clear that the right in Britain are the only people who can be trusted with national defence and security and - unless the lib dems emerge as the new new labour, proclaiming their reluctant love of the bomb on the way - then it looks as if the right's monopoly on sanity will continue for quite some time.
This is what they offer. A debate, within the Scottish Labour Branch, about the UK's nuclear detterrent, which is on my doorstep.
ReplyDeleteA debate?
GITF.
I had childhood nightmares about being incinerated in a nuclear war. I feel the same insane are on the levers.
I am not convinced by any arguement that says, the longer we have them, the less likely we are to use them.
In fact, just the opposite. There are, as we go on, inevitably, future insane politicians that would not hesitate. I am perhaps astonished that neither Afghanistan nor Iraqi were made into nuclear parking lots. The favourite expression of the lunatic right in the USA.
But who is there to stop them?
Tell me.
The technology exists. It can't be uninvented. Even if you got every nation on earth to agree to scrap nuclear weapons you can be pretty sure Kim Jong Wrong-un would keep one or two in a vault somewhere, along with Putin. You can't trust these guys. That some people think they can be trusted shows just how naive and childlike western civilisation has become - in contrast to the cynical, unreformed gangster hardmen who would gladly tear it down in a heartbeat, given the opportunity.
DeleteAnd even if every country got rid of every last nuke on the planet, the knowledge of how to construct one is now scattered around the planet - stored in human brains, books and computers. A working nuke will be months away at most for the industrialised nations - and, should a large scale war break out, somebody somewhere is going to give into temptation.
We are where we are. We can't change it.
My big nightmare growing up was zombies. With SNP mania, it has come to fruition.
The technology for Concorde exists, but there aren't any Concordes anymore. A hopeful precedent.
DeleteIt was loss making and unsafe.
DeleteAnd I suppose nukes are too! But they are profitable in other ways. Britain and France carry absolutely massive influence on the international stage, in part, because of our nuclear weapons. Tiny Britain can veto a UN resolution, even if backed by every other nation on earth.
Would we hold such sway if we had chosen not to go down the nuclear path? Probably not.
With power comes influence and with influence comes money. We can rig international rules on trade to our favour. I know that's a wee bit immoral - but it's a rough old world out there and we need to secure our place in it.
James the Concorde analogy is very weak as it is that technology that goes in to fighter aircraft. It hasn't gone away at all and has in fact improved.
DeleteThe thing is that even I could jerry rig a simple nuke given the right material and I'm just a physics grad.
I don't think that we can disarm down to zero but we should be able to get out down to about 10 for each block.
What we really need is good control of the material to make sure that small groups can't have it.
Only 4 Trident boats, with only one on patrol at any time. Not all the tubes are loaded.
ReplyDeleteTrident Knowledge Fail guys.