Saved myself £25 but still incredibly sad, because of the 138 Labour MPs who yesterday voted with the Tory government to spend £200 billion on weapons of mass destruction, and have demonstrated again why unlike Jeremy Corbyn and the 48 who voted against do not represent the real opposition to this government that the country needs and makes the split within the party even deeper. The decision to hold a vote now was made not in the interests of national security, but simply to embarrass the Labour Party.Theresa May and the rest of the Tory's must be laughing their socks off.
Parliament has voted now in favour of renewing Britain's nuclear deterrent, Trident by a majority of 355 after it was backed by almost the entire Conservative Party and more than half of Labour MPs , the vote was passed despite opposition from Scottish National party MPs and those of Plaid Cymru and thankfully my local MP liberal Mark Williams plus the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong unilateralist who spoke out against the plans during a debate in parliament on Monday afternoon.
Feel absolutely betrayed and has left me bitter and angry but I guess it solidifies my view that the Parliamentary Labour Party does not represent it's members, I was a member back in the day, drawn in chiefly because of it's position of unilateralism a party that seemed to be about principles, for peace that have for a long time now been sadly abandoned.Whose idea was it in the first place to commission Trident, Tony bloody Blair who admitted that the only purpose of maintaining the nuclear weapons system was to give Britain status.
Remember that each of these warheads is eight times more powerful than the atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima.These weapons have no legitimate purpose: their use should be illegal under almost every conceivable circumstance, as huge numbers of civilian casualties would be unavoidable. That is why the International Court of Justice ruled in 1996 the threat or use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to the rules of international law. Not only are these weapons immoral, potentially genocidal and strategically irrelevant in the face of the realistic threats we face today, they are also hugely expensive. The Government's National Security Strategy identifies international terrorism, cyber-attacks and natural hazards as greater threats than nuclear war.These warheads cannot be used without inflicting massive loss of civilian life and poisoning the environment for decades.
Fair play however to SNP MP member Mhari Black who said that " These nuclear weapons serve no other purpose than to satisfy the ego of the British establishment, we can't afford to look after the disabled, we can't afford to look after the unemployed, we can't afford to pay pensions on time, and all the people who have been making that argument for austerity are now the very same people who are telling us that we can afford to write a blank cheque." and to principled Welsh MPs who followed their conscience.
Ditching Trident, and joining the vast majority of countries without nuclear weapons, should have been the common sense decision for Parliament to take, and would have been the right thing to do.
I will add that Nuclear weapons don't make me feel safer a world without these weapons of mass destruction would though. The money saved by ditching Trident would be enough for a fair social security system and a properly funded NHS enabling us to build 120 state of the art hospitals and employing 150,000 new nurses, build 3 million affordable homes, install solar panels in every home in the UK or pay the tuition fees for 8 million students.
The vote effectively means the UK will continue to possess and deploy its nuclear weapons arsenal, threatening other countries with annihilation and exposing its people to serious risks of nuclear accidents, use or attacks, for a further generation.
Yes said it before, but yes my mind truly boggles at the stupidity of politicians playing dangerous games with our lives.
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