The recent, empty point-scoring, hoo hah over the misfiring UK Trident missile test, and the flag-waving, posturing in Parliament and the mass media last year over the, up to £100bn, renewal of the Trident ballistic missile system, has highlighted yet again the ideological vulnerability of the Labour Left on defence issues.

Quite understandably, the left, working within a capitalist state with a major colonial/imperialist past, and now a junior partner, in the global structures of “Pax Americana”, has tended to respond with “nothing to do with me guv”, or an outright pacifist, approach to problems of the UK defence strategy and capabilities. The exception to this lack of interest being the Left’s almost universal hostility to nuclear weapons, from the moment Labour’s Attlee government established the UK as a nuclear weapons state – without informing the full Cabinet, never mind Parliament! The spirit of that decision has been well-described: Continue reading →