May urged to delay vote on ‘immoral’ Trident
The Scottish National Party (SNP) has called on new British Prime Minister Theresa May to delay a parliamentary vote on the renewal of Trident, saying it is wrong to spend billions of pounds to expand the country’s “immoral” nuclear weapons program.
Speaking amid nationwide anti-Trident protests in Scotland on Sunday, SNP’s Westminster leader Angus Robertson said Trident was “immoral” and plans to renew it needed “scrutiny.”
Thousands of Scots in more than 30 towns and cities across Scotland took to the streets over the weekend to protest against the UK’s use of a military base in Faslane, Argyll and Bute, to store nuclear weapons.
This is while the UK Parliament is set to vote on the program’s renewal on Monday, which if finalized, will allow the Defense Ministry to build more nuclear submarines.
"Trident is an immoral, obscene and redundant weapons system - and the decision on whether to renew it is one of the most important votes this parliament will ever take,” Robertson said, “It would be both morally and economically indefensible for the UK government to commit to spending hundreds of billions of pounds on weapons of mass destruction – even more so at a time when they are cutting funding for public services,” he continued.
"Having spent the best part of a month engaged in backstabbing, score-settling and navel-gazing, neither the Tories nor Labour are in any fit state to be giving proper scrutiny to decisions as important as this," the SNP official added, referring to the ongoing political turmoil in the UK after its exit from the European Union (EU).
During the build-up to the June 23 EU referendum, the ruling Conservative Party became increasingly divided over the vote while the Labour Party was engulfed in a leadership challenge. Prime Minister David Cameron’s step-down worsened the political turmoil.
So far the Ministry of Defense has refused to disclose the Trident program’s overall cost on the grounds that it is classified. While some analysts say the figure lays somewhere around £167 billion, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament estimates Trident to cost at least £205 billion, a figure Robertson said was closer to reality.
“It would be both morally and economically indefensible for the UK government to commit to spending hundreds of billions of pounds on weapons of mass destruction – even more so at a time when they are cutting funding for public services,” he said.
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