A white elephant

Michael Bartlet argues that Trident is both obsolete and immoral

by Michael Bartlet 4th January 2013

Nuclear weapons are the most expensive white elephant of them all. Ever since Ernest Bevin, as Labour foreign secretary, told a cabinet committee in 1946 ‘we have got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs. We have got to have the bloody Union Jack on top of it’, the maintenance of nuclear weapons has become a shibboleth of British government. Fleet Street wisdom saw Michael Foot’s commitment to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as costing Labour the 1987 election. A commitment to Trident was a visceral issue for the Social Democratic Party.