by Kevin Meagher

The hashtag meme #earliestpoliticalmemory, doing the rounds on Twitter the other day, got me thinking. Mine was probably my mother taking me on a ‘Women Against the Bomb’ sit-down protest on the steps of Bolton Town Hall when I was five or six.

Since then, I’ve held a pretty mainstream view that abhors the existence of nuclear weapons, but like most political pragmatists, I cleave towards multilateralism as a response; that is to say: ‘We’ll scrap ours when you scrap yours’.

The obvious flaw, of course, is that no-one wants to make the first move. And, so, nearly thirty years after the Cold War ended, nuclear weapons endure.

But if we scrap ours first, will the Russians, Chinese, Americans, Israelis, Pakistanis, Indians and others be equally willing to bash their missiles into ploughshares?

Anyone who thinks they would should reflect on how hard it is to get buy-in from many of the same countries for concerted action on global warming, or dealing with terrorism. The moral clarity with which unilateralists see the issue simply is not shared by the hard men of Russia and China. Gesture politics counts for little alongside realpolitik.

Unilateralism is therefore a well-meant but hopelessly naïve position. A quixotic non-engagement with hard reality.

That’s not intended as a slight. All reasonable people can agree that the ability to lay waste to entire countries and obliterate hundreds of millions of people is an objective moral evil.

But so is leaving the field clear for despots to possess nuclear weapons.

If we want to maintain the high stakes, zero-sum global status quo that promises mutually-assured destruction if any nuclear power fires a nuke, then we need to hang on to the wretched things, as we did during the long, tense decades of the Cold War.

Can more be done to rid the world of these infernal creations? Emphatically, yes. Has ridding the world of nuclear weapons slipped down the international agenda? Most certainly. Should Labour espouse a more muscular multilateralism? Definitely.

But the party is seemingly drifting down the path to unilateralism instead. Moreover, it is clear that Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters see this as an article of faith, regardless of last year’s conference decision to maintain the party’s current multilateralist position, and they will galvanise the new, more radical, grassroots members to effect a change.

This will, of course, be a political disaster for Labour. Already, as many as seven out of ten voters do not trust Jeremy Corbyn to safeguard national security. So the electoral implications are dire enough, but what are the practical consequences if Labour were to win an election making good on its pledge to scrap Trident?

Would Vladmir Putin suddenly do likewise, dismantling his missiles and submarines before bursting into a ropey rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine? Or would he smell Western weakness and roll his tanks into Ukraine?

Most obviously, the loss of Britain’s membership of the nuclear club means we would inevitably relinquish our seat as one of the permanent members of the UN’s Security Council. Either that, or we would have to step up defence spending on conventional weapons and risk more regular deployments of troops around the globe’s trouble spots in order to make up the shortfall.

Of course, if you’re Ken Livingstone, it’s fine if Britain becomes a ‘bit part player’ in global affairs. But who replaces us as a voice for democracy and human rights at the top table? A diminished Britain means a diminished voice for reason in the inner counsels of global diplomacy.

Then there’s the argument – the phoney argument – about the costs of renewing Trident. Phoney because the financial implications of maintaining a nuclear deterrent are utterly secondary: You either believe nuclear weapons are necessary to deal with the world as it is – rather than how we would want it to be – and are willing to pick up the inevitable costs; or you think nukes are wrong in principle and we should not possess them, in which case their cost is irrelevant.

For the record, it’s worth bearing in mind that total government spending this year is £760bn. Estimates for the costs of replacing Trident vary, but come in at around £600 million a year for 30 years, with running costs of around £2 billion a year.

So roughly a third of one per cent of total government spending per annum.

And although probably not the kind of scheme your average Keynesian has in mind, the GMB union estimates there are ‘tens of thousands’ of jobs dependent on Trident, many highly-skilled and in poor and remote parts of the country (like West Cumbria where the nuclear subs are built and Rosyth in Scotland were they are docked).

Realpolitik is seldom a good look – especially when pitted against the moral clarity and simplicity of ‘Scrap Trident’ – but it’s still a valid consideration. Labour should think long and hard about embracing unilateral nuclear disarmament, surrendering so much diplomatic influence in the process, as well as horrifying the British electorate, who are frightened enough at the deteriorating state of global security.

So I would still willingly sit and join-in calls for a world free from nukes, but it’s how we achieve that elusive goal that remains at issue. Muscular multilateralism is something Labour should push for, but unilateralism is the most vapid and dangerous form of gesture politics there is.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Uncut

Tags: CND, Jeremy Corbyn, Kevin Meagher, nuclear weapons, Trident, unilateralism