Last July, one of Theresa May’s first acts as Prime Minister was to stress her support for the renewal of the United Kingdom’s Trident nuclear programme. Asked by Scottish National Party MP George Kerevan if she would be prepared to authorise a strike which ‘could kill a hundred thousand innocent men, women and children’, she replied:
‘Yes. And I have to say to the honourable gentleman the whole point of a deterrent is that our enemies need to know that we would be prepared to use it, unlike some suggestions that we could have a nuclear deterrent but not actually be willing to use it, which seem to come from the Labour party frontbench.’
The rebuke was aimed at Jeremy Corbyn, a longtime supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, who – noting that the country’s on-patrol nuclear submarine currently carries 40 warheads, each eight times as powerful as the atomic bomb that killed 140,000 in Hiroshima in 1945 – pondered, ‘What is the threat we are facing that one million people’s deaths would actually deter?’.
In the end the House of Commons voted 472 to 117 in favour of renewing Trident. 140 Labour MPs voted for the programme, with just 47 joining their leader Corbyn in voting against. The sceptics also included all Scottish National Party MPs, all sitting Liberal Democrats, and the House’s solitary Green, plus Crispin Blunt, the sole Tory dissenter, who criticised the politicisation of the issue, while citing spiralling costs and the risk that new technologies will render ballistic missile submarines obsolete.
Thankfully the overwhelming confidence of the vast majority of Britain’s politicians has proven well placed. For it has now emerged that last June – unbeknownst to the general public, and even to most MPs – just weeks before the vote in the Commons, one of the country’s Trident missiles fired somewhere off the Florida coast.
In fact the missile – which was unarmed – completely misfired, veering off towards the United States instead of in the vague direction of Africa during a rare test. HMS Vengeance, the submarine involved in the misfire, only returned to the sea in December 2015 following a £350 million refit. It is one of four submarines in the Vanguard fleet, each of which is able to carry up to eight Trident missiles, but testing takes place seldom because the missiles cost £17 million apiece.
May – who during last summer’s debate said that scrapping Trident would amount to ‘an act of gross irresponsibility’, while accusing opponents of the programme of being among ‘the first to defend the country’s enemies’ – has refused to admit whether she knew about the misfire ahead of the Commons vote. She has however confirmed her ‘absolute faith in our Trident missiles’.
While the Ministry of Defence also declined to offer any more details regarding the misfire, it proudly described the test process as a ‘success’. Little matter that a Trident missile meant to travel 5,600 miles towards the sea west of Africa instead achieved precisely the opposite. Downing Street and the MoD continue to assure the nation that the effectiveness of Trident remains ‘unquestionable’.
The only logical conclusion in the face of such bizarre claims is that the malfunction either did not and does not matter, or was intended and therefore no ‘malfunction’ at all. At least the test showed that the United Kingdom can fire its missiles somewhere, a deterrent even if the destination is little more than pot-luck. And if a show of force is necessary every once in a while, why target the Africans? Better to let those overheated gun-toting Floridians know what we’re worth.
