Trident

Danny Kinahan Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I have been asked a number of times by the media and the press, “Are you doing this simply to embarrass the Labour party?”, but the Labour party needs no assistance from me in embarrassing itself on this matter.

[Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)]

rose—

[Brendan O'Hara]

I will take the hon. Gentleman’s intervention in a moment.

I have always argued that there is no moral, economic or military case for Trident, and—let us be absolutely clear—there is no moral case for any state to possess weapons of mass destruction. Possessing the wherewithal to destroy the world and everything in it several times over is not something to be proud of; indeed, it is something to be deeply ashamed of. I know of no creed, belief system or article of faith that has ever said it is okay to hold the threat of annihilation over one’s neighbour, and to disguise it as peacekeeping.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.

Looking around the world, we might think that the real threat today is militant jihadism or a dirty bomb. That is, of course, true in the immediate sense, but I wonder how many Members on either side of the House would have looked around the world 20 years ago and said, “We’ve got to be worried about ISIS.”

[Danny Kinahan]

rose—

[Tom Tugendhat]

Forgive me, but I must make some progress. How many of us would have thought that, rather than being one our allies, as we very much hoped she would be in the 1990s, Russia would be resurgent after the cold war, changing the borders of a European country for the first time since 1945 and sponsoring militias in Ukraine that intend to bring death not only to the peacekeepers we send, but to civilian aircraft flying overhead? Who would have predicted that? I would wager that no one would have predicted it. Because of that inability to predict, it is essential that we in the United Kingdom guarantee the ultimate security for us and our children. It is not enough to wish for peace—we must work for it and fight for it, and the nuclear deterrent is the ultimate proof that we will both work and fight for our own security.