Ed Davey will vote against renewing Trident!

5.21.50pm GMT Sun 11th Feb 2007

Edward Davey MP will vote against renewing Trident

One of the things that came from last night's Question Time event in Warwick was Ed Davey 'coming out' after pressure from me he said that he would vote against renewing Trident in a vote in this Parliament. Ed's reasoning is different from my opposition - he simply thinks we can wait a bit and make the decision in 2014 (or thereabouts). This is the first time one of MPs has publicly said that will vote against the Government on this (a couple have told me they will privately, and they told me they will also oppose the motion to Liberal Democrat Conference), I see this as a major step forward and hope other MPs will also come out.

The first question after the break in the Question Time debate was on Trident, I was expecting one as it is the hottest issue in the party at the moment in my opinion. The questioner stated she was against renewing Trident and was concerned she was out of step with the Parliamentary Party. David Manuel (the Chair) called on my to answer first, this caused some amusement - I guess my opposition is more widely known than I expected (it shows that people read this website!). I started by reassuring the questioner that it was the Parliamentary Party that was out of step with us not the other way way. I then moved on to why I oppose renewal, spoke of my trip to Hiroshima and Pakistan and the hypocrisy of us telling Iran (and others) that they could not develop these weapons but we could. I mentioned the letter from the Mayor of Hiroshima to Sir Ming and how he asked us as a country to take the lead, I went further calling for the party to take the lead within British politics.

Ed Davey outlined his position which was essentially that we could wait and the cost of decommissioning (something I have never argued about). Alan Beddow (link below) outlined his opposition based on the fact we do not need to decide yet, Nigel Rock and Phil Bennion agreed in the main.

A few points were taken from the floor including a point about deterrence. Ed suggested that having Trident has worked as a deterrent, I responded saying that it has not - other countries have not been deterred from developing nuclear weapons and it has certainly not deterred attacks on the UK or the US and added that the point of having a nuclear weapon was to be able to use it yet we are not under attack or threat of an attack from any state but from terrorism and that made our nuclear deterrent worthless as we couldn't use it.

Ed Davey also pointed out keeping some Trident would keeps us in the next round of negotiation in 2012 and demonstrates our commitment to disarmament, representing our best chance of achieving reduction in proliferation. I didn't rebut this at the time, but on hindsight I am not sure I agree, only two of the EU3 talking to Iran have nuclear weapons - for some reason non-nuclear Germany is allowed in, why should our not having nuclear weapons prevent us from entering the debate, after all we will retain our permanent seat on the UN Security Council thereby allow us to keep a strong voice.

I however did point out the red herring of 2012, it may well be true that Trident doesn't need to be replaced yet but the realpolitik is the decision is going to be taken this Parliament and we as a Party need to be able to vote in Parliament rather than saying "ask us in 5 years time!" - to this Ed confirmed that he would be voting against renewing Trident and against the Government when the time came, he suggested whilst the Parliamentary Party have not finalised their position yet he expected voting against to be our line. This certainly left me much happier, although I will be happier still if we win the motion at Conference.

All in all it was a good debate and although I was the only panelist to come out against renewal now it was very clear that the audience by and large agreed with my position.

Related Links:

Read Alan Beddow's review of Question Time

Visit the No New Trident website