Last week Tim Montgomerie floated the idea that Trident might now be too expensive for Britain. Yesterday Gordon Brown suggested that Britain's nuclear deterrent could be part of a multilateral agreement on disarmament. Julian Lewis, MP for New Forest East, and shadow defence minister responsible for the nuclear deterrent argues that Britain still needs Trident.
These are very tough times for British defence planners. Years before the present economic crisis, the United Kingdom was fighting military campaigns on a peacetime Defence Budget. Increasingly this has led to inter-Service warfare for inadequate resources.
Yet, the case for retaining our nuclear deterrent is common ground between Government and Opposition, and attempts to revive unilateralism have failed to generate significant support, regardless of the end of the Cold War. This is due to a mixture of military and political factors.
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