PM faces nuclear vote rebellion

As the Tories are backing him there is no way that Tony Blair can lose today's vote over the renewal of Britain's Trident weapons system, however, he faces his toughest vote yet since the Iraq war with the distinct possibility that he may have to rely on those same Tory votes (that he relied upon to secure the Iraq war) if he is to have his plans accepted by the House.

For any Labour leader other than Blair that would be a shameful proposition. But, as Blair is the best leader the Tories never had, he will accept this as long as he gets his right wing policy through.

The government's stance prompted two resignations this week - deputy Commons leader Nigel Griffiths and ministerial aide Jim Devine both quit their posts in protest.

With only three months between the White Paper being announced and the vote, 154 MPs - including more than 80 Labour MPs - have signed a Parliamentary motion calling for a longer period of consultation for all political parties, other interested groups and the public.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell has also signed the motion.

His party wants to postpone a decision on Trident until 2014, but the government argues that a decision needs to be taken now as the submarines take so long to build.

Former environment minister, and Labour leadership contender, Michael Meacher is also against the plans.

"We're in the post cold-war environment, when there is no nuclear enemy in sight and the Ministry of Defence cannot actually suggest any nuclear enemy in the foreseeable future which might require nuclear weapons as a security."

He said the £20bn did not cover the ongoing costs of maintenance over 40 years, which was "probably costing nearer £70 billion".

On top of all of the above there is the question of our commitment to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires nuclear states to disarm just as it calls for non-nuclear states not to pursue nuclear weapons. It strikes me as the height of hypocrisy that we should now be telling Iran and North Korea that they are not able to have weapons systems that we ourselves are in the process of recommissioning.

The only possible logic behind such a hypocritical stance is the logic that Britain displayed when she had her empire. We are saying that we are civilised enough to control such technology and that the North Koreans and Iranians are not. It is simply racism in it's boldest form.

It is hardly surprising that the Iranians and North Koreans find such a mindset insulting. To have such a mindset displayed by a Labour Prime Minister is simply shocking. And , like almost everything Blair does, this has been done with almost no Parliamentary consultation. Hence the resignations and the prospect of an embarrassing loss of votes from Labour MP's. Blair hasn't bothered to even make his case as he knows he's not going to convince anyone.

And of course, like everything Blair now passionately believes in, he used to believe in something quite the opposite. It's hard to reconcile the man now proposing this with the younger Blair who was actually a member of CND. Was he lying then when he said he shared the things that we believed in? Was he really that cynical?

Now, of course, he will justify his actions by giving us yet more apocalyptic visions of this supposedly new world we all live in since 9-11. I don't know about the rest of you, but my world is exactly the same. Occasionally, every couple of years, a group of religious nutters set of bombs on the tube. It's horrible, but after 39 years of the IRA it hardly stops Londoners going about their business, and it's nothing like the apocalyptic world that Blair keeps describing.

I like Simon Jenkins' take on this:

‘And the clouds came flying through the air bringing winds and hurling lightning and arrows, and it rained hail, fire and swords, and killed a great number of people.’ So cried the Florentine monk Savonarola of the coming Day of Judgment in 1492. The terrified citizens duly rose and followed him into a disastrous alliance with Italy’s new conqueror, Charles VIII of France. Four years later they had had enough of Savonarola’s apocalyptic waffle, dragged him from his monastery and hanged him.

Whenever I hear Tony Blair nowadays, I think of Savonarola. In his passionate foreign policy apologia in Sedgefield last week, he declared Britain to be ‘in mortal danger’, facing threats ‘different from anything the world has faced before’. Mr Blair plainly sees his primary task as no longer to improve Britain’s public services. Mankind is on a path to destruction from which he alone can save it. The Prime Minister is either terrifyingly right, or mad.

I think Blair has actually become infused with that same brand of right wing paranoia that is currently fuelling Cheney and the neo-cons. They see possible world destruction from a group of men sitting in caves. Men that they gave up seriously looking for when they transferred their attention to Iraq rather than Afghanistan, which makes me think they can't regard the problem as being as acute as they keep telling us it is.

Which, as their actions seem not to support their rhetoric, leaves only one other possible reason for this dichotomy. They are deliberately using fear as a way to get what they want.

I'll wait to hear what Tony has to say today about the impending apocalypse and adjust my fear monitor accordingly. Or wait, I could save a lot of time and just set it in advance to, "Shit yourself!"

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Tags: Blair, Trident, renewal, recommissioning