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The change in leadership of the Labour Party has brought the issue of Britain’s Trident nuclear weapons system back into the spotlight. Depressingly, however, the election of a man who is anti-Trident has merely thrown into relief the general consensus within the country’s largest parties for its retention. As this essay will show, these advocates of a British nuclear ‘deterrent’ cynically use the issue for the furtherance of domestic political objectives, rather than to meet genuine defensive needs.
The United Kingdom has four submarines equipped to fire Trident nuclear missiles, which are purchased from the United States of America. Almost incredibly, one of these submarines is always at sea, ostensibly deterring nuclear attack from nebulous and changing enemies of Britain. This is known as ‘Continuous At-Sea Deterrence’. The cost of Trident is very high, accounting for 6% of the annual defence budget, according to the Ministry of Defence.
