Jeremy Corbyn has backed calls for the Scottish Labour party to vote against the renewal of Trident this weekend despite warnings it could widen an already deep rift within the party.



The Labour leader told the Guardian that a vote against the nuclear deterrent at the party’s Scottish conference on Sunday would greatly strengthen his attempts to change Labour policy at Westminster after the issue failed to get debated at the party’s UK conference earlier this month.

Speaking before his first address to Scottish Labour as party leader, Corbyn said: “I think it might be an encouragement to many people in the rest of the UK to listen very carefully to what’s being said at the Scottish conference. There are similar debates going on all across the party in Britain.

“I was only elected myself some 60 days ago and I have done my best to open up the possibility of that kind of open debate within the party.”

In his conference speech, Corbyn will attempt to rebuild Labour’s ailing support in Scotland and emphasise its shift to the left by insisting that only his party is truly socialist. He will accuse the Scottish National party of failing poor school pupils and college students.

“If you want socialist change, if you want a leftwing alternative, you have to vote for it,” Corbyn is expected to say, describing Labour as “a socialist party in both our words and our deeds”.

He will add: “If you’re satisfied with rising inequality, rising child poverty and widening health inequalities, then Labour is not for you. If you’re satisfied that nearly a million people in Scotland are in fuel poverty or that half of all housing in Scotland falls short of official quality standards, then Labour isn’t for you.”

The future of Trident has already emerged as the most contentious question facing the party’s conference in Perth, with rival blocs within Labour vying to influence a vote on whether issue of the nuclear weapons system the will be included in the conference’s final agenda.

With a majority of Labour MPs in favour of renewing Trident, Scottish Labour’s leadership is split on the issue: leader Kezia Dugdale supports the deterrent while Ian Murray, Labour’s shadow Scottish secretary, is for unilateral disarmament.

Delegates are scheduled to decide on Friday whether a motion on Trident will be selected for debate on Sunday alongside other topics. Delegates to the UK party conference dropped a Trident resolution, avoiding a potentially embarrassing public dispute, in favour of votes on austerity, the refugee crisis and mental health.

Earlier this week, the GMB union wrote to party members warning that cancelling the weapons systel would threaten thousands of Scottish defence jobs, including those directly dependent on the Trident submarine base at Faslane, west of Glasgow.

On the eve of conference, Neil Findlay, the defeated Scottish leadership contender and Corbyn’s closest ally in the Scottish parliament, issued a statement backing the proposed anti-Trident motion. Scottish members of the Unite are also said to favour scrapping Trident, despite support for renewing the system from the union’s general secretary, Len McCluskey.

Although Scottish voters remain broadly in favour of Trident, the SNP and pro-independence movement have succeeded in pushing nuclear weapons far higher up the agenda of the younger centre-left voters Labour needs to recapture in Scotland.

Corbyn will address the party with Labour still deeply unpopular among Scottish voters and no evidence so far that his election as UK leader has boosted support before Holyrood elections this May – his first significant electoral test.

Recent opinion polls show Labour is at 22% while the SNP under Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership are on course to win a second successive landslide with more than 50% of the vote. One recent YouGov poll for the Times put the Tories only two points behind Labour, suggesting the Conservatives could became Scotland’s second largest party.

In another issue dividing the labour movement in Scotland, Corbyn plans to oppose proposals from the Scottish TUC and the SNP that Holyrood takes control of trade union legislation after the UK government began pushing restrictions on strike ballots and union funding in legislation through Westminster.

The STUC leader, Grahame Smith, will tell delegates in Perth that devolving trade union legislation will protect Scottish workers’ rights. Corbyn said he believed that breaking up UK-wide employment law would weaken those rights.

“I want to see the employment protection we’ve got enhanced and strengthened, and trade union rights strengthened; we’re not going to see the trade union bill [defeated] by having a different approach to it,” he told the Guardian. “I want a labour movement united in opposition to it.”