Blair 'overriding Cabinet' on renewal of Trident

The international lawyer Philippe Sands, a QC in the Matrix chambers co-founded by Cherie Blair, has produced a legal opinion for Greenpeace saying that Tony Blair's plans to renew the British Trident nuclear deterrent would breach the Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty.

All indications are that Blair hopes to push the renewal of Trident through, effectively "bouncing" the Cabinet and Labour MP's, as he sees retaining Britain's membership of the nuclear club as essential to his legacy.

At a time when we are insisting that both Iran and North Korea desist from attempts to obtain a nuclear weapon, surely Britain would send a much stronger signal that we believe in the international laws that we insist others obey if we ourselves paid it more than simply the coarsest form of lip service.

The nuclear non-proliferation treaty insists that nuclear nations must take steps to disarm. Blair is treating the treaty with contempt, whilst demanding that other country's follow it to the letter.

Dominick Jenkins, Greenpeace's disarmament campaigner, said: "While Tony Blair rattles his sabre and waves treaties at foreigners, he's agitating for Britain to break those same treaties. Building a new nuclear weapon is against international law and threatens to unravel the global non-proliferation system."

This is similar to the contempt of the treaty that Bush has displayed when he announced plans to build a new range of bunker busting nuclear weapons.

At the heart of this hypocrisy is nothing less than blatant racism. Blair and Bush are demanding the right to insist who is civilised enough to possess the nuclear deterrent and who is not. It is naturally assumed that we are to be uniquely trusted in this matter, despite the fact that the US remain the only country ever to have used such a weapon and that Bush has declared the right to use nuclear weapons even against non-nuclear states.

Within the current Labour government, Blair faces some opposition, although it is hardly likely to stop him:

At the Cabinet's weekly meeting today, Mr Blair will face down three sceptics who are pressing for a wider debate before a decision is taken in principle - Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary; Hilary Benn, the International Development Secretary and Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary.

Isn't it shocking that, within the current Labour Cabinet, only three people are prepared to stand up for such a long established Labour principle? A principle that, I agree, once made us unelectable. There was a day, during the Cold War, when Labour's principled stance on nuclear disarmament was a vote loser.

In the new, post 9-11, world we are told that everything has changed.

If there is a chance that bin Laden and other groups could one day acquire such a weapon, isn't it now incumbent on us to work on making those weapons obsolete?

Isn't this the very time that the Labour Party should be renewing it's pledge to it's own principles? Principles that have become so internationally acceptable that they have gone on to form a bedrock of international law?

Blair is out of step with the planet. The Labour Party would be foolish to join him.

And yet that is what they appear to be doing...

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tag: Blair, nuclear non proliferation treaty, Bush, North, Korea