Chancellor Gordon Brown made his annual address to the Mansion House dinner on June 21 in which he made clear that he supports the replacemenl of Trident, Britain's so called "independent nuclear deterrent"
In so doing, Brown surely made clear to any who had any doubt that there is not a cigarette paper of difference between his policies and those of the man hopes to succeed as Prime Minister, Tony Blair.
Brown is right to claim that he was only repeating what was in the manifesto on which Blair was re-elected last time round. Crunch coming in that, given it is likely to take around 14 years to develop a replacement (as it did when Trident took over from predecessor Polaris in 1994), decisions need to be made soon.
In a recent ICM poll 81 per cent of the British public peeve mat toe decision on whether or not to replace Trident should be made by a vote in Parliament, but while Blair has said there will be "extensive debate", he has not agreed to a vote on this crucial question.
Trident is likely to be a key plank of any challenge to Brown from the left in a forthcoming Labour leadership contest.
It was good to hear Keith Sonnet, deputy general secre tary of Unison, the country's biggest trade union, urge Mr Brown to think again, given that too many at the top of the unions have been willing to nail their colours to his mast.
As the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), Britain has an obligation under Article 6 to disarm. Not only is this the only moral option, but in fact the only legal one. Trident is likely to be a key plank of any challenge to left in a