Backing Trident is supposed to make a politician look hard, realistic and committed to Britain\u2019s long history of military defence. That\u2019s why the Tories delighted in holding a debate on renewing the nuclear weapons system in June 2016.
But it was the Tory Prime Minister who floundered this weekend, after it emerged that three weeks before that debate, an unarmed Trident missile misfired — and veered off towards the United States instead of Africa. Downing Street confirmed May knew about the error before the parliamentary debate.
Trident critics have mobilised. Scotland\u2019s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, called the revelation \u201cserious\u201d. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a longstanding opponent of nuclear weapons, said the error was \u201cpretty catastrophic\u201d.
The idea of a rogue nuclear missile heading for the White House may have fuelled the disarmament movement. But even if you enjoy the game of nuclear poker, fixating on Trident is dangerous. Because while MPs rehearse the same old Cold War arguments, the rest of the world has moved on.
Every hour debating Trident is an hour not spent debating cyber warfare. As Peter Pomerantsev prophetically wrote in April 2015 , Russian military theory has in recent years assumed that it would not be possible to match the West militarily, but wars can be won in the \u201cpsychosphere\u201d, through misinformation.
Since the Russian cyber attacks during the US election , few can doubt this strategy is paying off — and that our defence systems have a long way to catch up. As shadow Defence secretary, Emily Thornberry described this as \u201cthe crucial test\u201d of the 21st century. The government has pledged \u00a31.9bn in cyber security defences over the next five years, but will that be enough? Nerds in a back room are not as thrilling as nuclear submarines, but how they are deployed matters too.
Secondly, there is the cost. Even if you back the idea of a nuclear deterrent, renewing Trident is a bit like replacing the guest bathroom when the regular loo is hardly flushing. A 2015 Centreforum paper described it as \u201cgold-plated\u201d — if your idea of gold-plated is the ability to blow up \u201ca minimum of eight cities\u201d. There is a gory but necessary debate to be had about alternatives which could free up more money to be spent on conventional forces.
Finally, a nuclear deterrent is only credible if you intend to use it. For this reason, the British government needs to focus on protecting the infrastructure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, now under threat from a US President who declared it \u201cobsolete\u201d. Eastern Europe has been nervous about the bear on its borders for some time — the number of Poles joining the country\u2019s 120 paramilitary organisations has tripled in two years.
Simply attacking Trident on safety grounds will only get you so far — after all, the argument behind renewing Trident is that the status quo will not do. Furthermore, for all the furore over a misfired Trident missile, it\u2019s hard to imagine that should the hour come, the biggest worry for the crew of a nuclear submarine will be the small chance of a missile going in the wrong direction. That would be missing the rather higher chance of global nuclear apocalypse.
Anti-Trident MPs will make the most of May’s current embarrassment. But if they can build bridges with the more hawkish members of the opposition, and criticise the government’s defence policy on its own terms, they will find plenty more ammunition.
Since Daniel Hannan, a formerly obscure MEP, has emerged as the anointed intellectual of the Brexit elite, The Staggers is charting his ascendancy…
State of this:
I mean honestly, where do you even begin? Even by Daniel\u2019s rarefied standards of idiocy, this is a stonker. How is it stupid? Let me count the ways.
1. \u201cOur female head of government\u201d implies the existence of \u201ctheir female head of government\u201d. Which is odd, because the tweet is clearly aimed at Hillary Clinton, who isn\u2019t anybody\u2019s head of government.
Way to kick someone when they\u2019re down, Dan. What next? \u201cSo pleased that my daughter received a wide selection of Christmas presents, unlike those of certain families\u201d?
2. I dunno, I\u2019m no expert, but it\u2019s just possible that there are reasons why so few women make it to the top of politics which don\u2019t have anything to do with how marvellous Britain is.
3. Hillary Clinton was not \u201cthe last guy\u2019s wife\u201d. You can tell this, because she was not married to Barack Obama, whose wife is called Michelle. (Honestly, Daniel, I\u2019m surprised you haven\u2019t spotted the memes.)
4. She wasn\u2019t married to the guy before him, come to that. Her husband stopped being president 16 years ago, since when she\u2019s been elected to the Senate twice and served four years as Secretary of State.
5. I\u2019m sure Hillary would love to have been able to run for president without reference to her husband \u2013 for the first few years of her marriage, indeed, she continued to call herself Hillary Rodham. But in 1980 Republican Frank White defeated Bill Clinton\u2019s campaign to be re-elected as govenor of Arkansas, in part by mercilessly attacking the fact his wife still used her maiden name.
In the three decades since, Hillary has moved from Hillary Rodham, to Hillary Rodham Clinton, to Hillary Clinton. You can see this as a cynical response to conservative pressure, if you so wish \u2013 but let\u2019s not pretend there was no pressure to subsume her political identity into that of her husband, eh? And let\u2019s not forget that it came from your side of the fence, eh, Dan?
6. Also, let\u2019s not forget that the woman you\u2019re subtweeting is a hugely intelligent former senator and secretary of state, who Barack Obama described as the most qualified person ever to run for president. I\u2019m sure you wouldn\u2019t want to be so patronising as to imply that the only qualification she had was her husband, now, would you?
7. I\u2019d love to know what qualifications Dan thinks are sufficient to become US president, and whether he believes a real estate mogul with an inherited fortune and a reality TV show has them.
8. Hillary Clinton got nearly 3m more votes than Donald Trump, by the way.
9. More votes than any white man who has ever run for president, in fact.
10. Certainly a lot more votes than Theresa May, who has never faced a general election as prime minister and became leader of the government by default after the only other candidate left in the race dropped out. Under the rules of British politics this is as legitimate a way of becoming PM as any, of course, I\u2019m just not sure how winning a Tory leadership contest by default means she \u201cran in her own right\u201d in a way that Hillary Clinton did not.
11. Incidentally, here\u2019s a video of Daniel Hannan demanding Gordon Brown call an early election in 2009 on the grounds that \u201cparliament has lost the moral mandate to carry on\u201d.
So perhaps expecting him to understand how the British constitution works is expecting too much.
12. Why the hell is Hannan sniping at Hillary Clinton, who is not US president, when the man who is the new US president has, in three days, come out against press freedom, basic mathematics and objective reality? Sorry, I\u2019m not moving past that.
13. Notice the way the tweet says that our \u201chead of government \u201d got there on merit. That\u2019s because our \u201chead of state \u201d got the job because her great, great grandmother happened to be a protestant in 1701 and her uncle wanted to marry a divorcee \u2013 all of which makes it a bit difficult to say that our head of government \u201cran in her own right\u201d. But hey, whatever makes you happy.
14. Is Daniel calling the US a banana republic? I mean, it\u2019s a position I have some sympathy with in this particular week, but it\u2019s an odd fit with the way he gets all hot and bothered whenever someone starts talking about the English-speaking peoples.
15. Incidentally, he stole this tweet from his 14-year-old daughter:
16. Who talks, oddly, like a 45-year-old man.
17. And didn\u2019t even credit her! It\u2019s exactly this sort of thing which stops women making it to the top rank of politics, Daniel.
18. He tweeted that at 6.40am the day after the march. Like, he spent the whole of Saturday trying to come up with a zinger, and then eventually woke up early on the Sunday unable to resist stealing a line from his teenage daughter. One of the great orators of our age, ladies and gentlemen.
19. He thinks he can tweet this stuff without people pointing and laughing at him.<\/p>\n

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