This goes for Cumbria too ...
Ruth Davidson, leader of the Conservatives in Scotland has issued this statement indicating that the Scottish Conservatives support those working in the defence industries and in naval bases whose jobs would be put at risk if the SNP, Scottish Labour, or Jeremy Corbyn succeeded in closing nuclear submarine bases in Scotland.
Conservatives in Cumbria stand in similar solidarity with BAE Systems employees and all the workers in Barrow and elsewhere who have built and maintained the Vanguard submarines which carry Britain's current Trident nuclear deterrent, and subject to a parliamentary vote next year, will build and maintain the successor submarine programme.
The Conservatives are committed to maintaining Britain's nuclear and conventional defences and will meet the commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence.
Nuclear weapons were needed in the past to deter aggression by the former Soviet Union and they succeeded in doing so. Conservatives believe that we live in a dangerous world and Britain cannot afford the luxury of pretending there is no possibility that in the next thirty years that deterrent will be needed again.
Unilateral nuclear disarmament would mark Britain in the eyes of potential predators as lacking the will to defend ourselves or our allies. Let us remember the comments with which a former Soviet President, Yuri Andropov - who like the present Russian leader, was previously KGB - showed what he really thought of the likes of CND and "Stop the War" -
"Let no one expect unilateral disarmament from us. We are not naive people."
Neither are we.
Comments
A little like blackadder explaining how the war started
now sure you can argue there is no way to force the other to do the same, but then, it does cure the Itchy fingers, and you flinched so I thought you were going to strike one, problem.
There were sensible treaties involving multilateral disarmament between NATO and the Warsaw pact, and other moves to prevent an accidental nuclear war, and I supported them.
Equally the nuclear deterrent did stop any large scale or direct war breaking out between NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations for forty years. One military officer or statesman said when I was a boy, "If these weapons ever have to be used, they've failed."
The deterrent did work. We'll never know, but it is my opinion that without nuclear weapons there would have been a World War III at some time between the Cuban missile crisis and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
Bags I don't blink first!