The Top Brass (retd) Brexit Letter

On 24 February the Daily Telegraph published a letter from 12 retired very senior military officers addressing the security aspect of Brexit (as the more dramatic possible outcome of the June referendum on the UK’s leaving the European Union is known). Key extracts:

As former military officers, we think that it is time to consider the broader strategic issues. Between us we have led the Royal Navy, Army, and Royal Air Force, or held other senior positions in the military. … we are particularly concerned with one central question: will Britain be safer inside the EU or outside it? 

… Britain’s role in the EU strengthens the security we enjoy as part of Nato, adds to our capability and flexibility when it comes to defence co-operation and allows us to project greater power internationally. In a dangerous world it helps us to safeguard our people, our prosperity and our way of life. We therefore believe strongly that it is in our national interest to remain an EU member.

Originally the letter had 13 signatories. After its publication, various newspapers, for example the Guardian, explained that the letter had originated from Number 10. It was also revealed that Downing Street had had to apologise to one general for adding his name without his consent.

The word “military” tends to be misunderstood as referring solely to the Army, but correctly it is applicable (as in the letter above) to all three services. It is interesting, therefore, to consider the breakdown of the signatories by service (for the ranks see the note below):

The table raises two points. Firstly, I pointed out here five years ago that “One asset which British defence seems to possess in abundance is a large cohort of senior officers of all three services, serving and retired, …”. How big a cohort might that be? Well, in service currently there are about 100 men (mostly) of rank known as “three star” and above. Assuming that on average these people are in post for about three years, then retire at 60 and die at 80, it follows that for each one now working (and there were rather more than 100 a decade or two ago), there are six or seven predecessors enjoying their retirement. So Number 10 should have been able to call on, by my guesstimate, about 700 sound chaps but only alighted on 12.

Secondly, these “about 100” top posts have always been shared almost exactly among the three services, yet in the letter there are seven Army former top brass to one RAF. That is to say, only one RAF retiree among well over 200 who might have been approached. Odd, but then the referendum is becoming an increasingly odd business producing unlikely alliances. There is even one school of thought that whether the result is leave or remain, Boris Johnson will become the next leader of the Conservative party and therefore Prime Minister with hands then on so many levers of power. For example, the Daily Telegraph reported on 22 January that:

A senior RAF officer who commanded Britain’s 2011 intervention in Libya has been chosen to be the next Chief of the Defence Staff. Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach will take over the post as head of the military later this year after beating candidates from the Army and Navy. Sir Stuart was a surprise choice after being chosen ahead of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir George Zambellas, and Gen Sir Richard Barrons. The Prime Minister is believed to have met all three candidates in recent weeks to choose a replacement for the current Chief of the Defence Staff, Gen Sir Nicholas Houghton.

Johnson’s biographer, Sonia Purnell, has long held the view that:

I think he is the most ruthless, ambitious person I have ever met. (Introduction to Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition, 2011)

Whether under Boris’s affable exterior, there is a man with a long memory for his friends and for his enemies, I don’t know, but the RAF, typically shrewdly, seem to have kept their distance. As for the argument expressed in the letter, there are other views. For example, those of General Sir Michael Rose, who would have been the 13th man and who told Sky News:

I have doubts about the wisdom of using military officers for a political campaign. I happen to believe sovereignty and security are intrinsically linked and in recent years we've seen the EU erode our sovereignty.

Notes on the Table

Anyone really interested in the breakdown by rank will probably understand the “Star” and "NATO Equivalent" column headings and can study the signatories’ titles in their letter. But this might help:

OF8, 3 Star: Vice Admiral, Lt General, Air Vice Marshal
OF9, 4 Star: Admiral, General, Air Marshal
OF10; 5 Star: Admiral of the Fleet, Field Marshal, Marshal of the RAF.

The 5 Star rank is no longer used for Chiefs of the Defence Staff who are now 4 Star like the individual service chiefs. However, they seem to be given the higher rank on an honorary basis on retirement – only the Brits …

Royal Marine officers are probably counted as part of the RN for these arcane astronomical purposes.


UPDATE 29 February

The Times today has a pro-Brexit article, Don’t count on the EU to protect us. Nato will do that, by a retired Rear Admiral and in the Sun two former Major Generals and a Commodore are opining under the heading Falklands heroes call for Britain to leave the European Union. So the Notes above need to be extended:

OF7; 2 Star: Rear Admiral, Major General, Air Vice Marshal
OF6; 1 Star: Commodore, Brigadier, Air Commodore

There are probably more than 70 OF7s and 200 OF6s currently in post, so the total retired cohort (using the rule of thumb above) could be as many as 2000. And there are 115 days to go before Referendum Day!


UPDATE early March

The big guns seemed to fall silent, at least temporarily, in late February following a withering barrage from a former Royal Marine “OF7 2 Star”, Major General Julian Thompson, in the Daily Telegraph: I fought for Britain and I know how the EU weakens our defences, The myth that leaving the EU would harm British national security must be destroyed once and for all.  He attacked what he regards as four common myths which obscure understanding of why “membership of the EU weakens our national defence in very dangerous times”.

Labour’s Trident problem realised

In a post here at the end of January, I suggested that the Lib Dem interest in an alternative to Trident might pose a problem for Labour if a left of centre coalition had to be formed after the 2015 election. In so far as the results of 28 February’s Eastleigh by-election can be interpreted at all, Labour’s indiffferent showing suggests that they will not find it easy to pick up seats in the South. On the other hand, the Lib Dems demonstrated their ability to hold on to what they have. Certainly the odds against a Labour/Lib Dem coalition after 2015 have not gone up. But the shape of Labour’s Trident problem is beginning to surface like a submarine at the end of its patrol.

On 27 February, Lord West, former Chief of the Naval Staff and Minister for Security and Counter Terrorism in Gordon Brown’s Government of All the Talents, provided an opinion piece in the Independent, Discarding Trident would not aid global nuclear disarmament; it would only imperil UK security, which made it clear that in his view:

A debate is emerging within the Labour Party over its position on the nuclear deterrent. It is imperative that such discussions should be driven by national security needs and not short-term political considerations.  

… Numerous studies over the past 40 years have reaffirmed that a submarine based ballistic missile system is the best option if UK is to remain a nuclear weapon state. Having looked at other options in detail it is quite clear that none of them are as cheap or practical as their supporters claim. Labour must not lapse into the belief that an alternative to Trident is better at all costs. I firmly believe that any alternative would undermine our national security. The options of land or air-based systems need hardly be taken seriously. Both are highly vulnerable to pre-emptive strike and would entail massive infrastructure and platform, delivery and weapons development costs. Similar concerns over cost and vulnerability make a surface ship-based system another thing of foolish fantasy.  

… What seems a seductive plan for Labour with a post-2015 coalition in mind is in fact highly dangerous. Nuclear deterrence is too important to get wrong. Trident has been underwritten by the US until 2042 and provides the most effective, affordable option for the UK’s nuclear deterrent capability. The sooner the Labour Party agrees the better.

An Independent news item on the same day by Andrew Grice followed suit:

Labour will fight the next general election on a pledge to retain Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, senior party sources have said. Although some advisers to Ed Miliband want him to opt for a scaled-down, cheaper alternative to the current Trident system, there are growing signs that Labour will join the Conservatives in backing a £25billion "like-for-like" replacement.  

… Lord West, who was directly responsible for Trident as head of the Navy, believes such [Lib Dem alternative] options are deeply flawed. But he is worried that Labour might be tempted into taking a decision based on short-term political calculations – building bridges with the Lib Dems – and making savings that would not materialise.

Predictably the Independent’s revelation was not greeted with joy in some Labour circles and by the end of the day, Sunny Hundal posted reassurance, Has Labour already committed to renewing Trident? No, on the Liberal Conspiracy blog:

The Independent today had a big ‘exclusive’ story titled: ‘Labour to join Tories in backing a £25bn deal to renew Trident fleet‘. … The story was unsurprisingly picked up by many across the left and criticised from within the party and outside. But the actual contents of the story didn’t seem to match the headline, so I made a few calls. A source from the the shadow defence team told me that the headline was essentially jumping the gun: no final decision had been made.  

… Labour say the decision on whether to renew Trident will be based on three factors: capability of such a deterrent, whether it is cost-effective and save money on the current Trident bill, and thirdly – allow the UK to downgrade our current stockpile and warheads deployed. The Labour spokesperson said Labour’s decision will also be based on the work that Des Browne is doing on the matter.

(For Browne’s likely views, see the 6 February update to my January post.)

So why the Independent article? It seems to have been prompted by Lord West raising concerns about the alternatives to Trident. How seriously that intervention should be taken is up for debate. But I was told in no uncertain terms that a decision had not been made on like-for-like renewal of Trident. So when will a decision be made? That depends on when the Trident alternatives review is published (which should be this spring, and could be as late as September).  

It also depends on what the review says. If it says there aren’t many viable and cost-effective alternatives then Labour may be backed into a corner. If, however, the review offers a range of alternatives and sufficient level of detail on how they could work, there would be more momentum to opt for an alternative.

On 1 March, Labour’s difficulties in accommodating the Lib Dems were made more acute by another opinion piece, this time in the Daily Telegraph, from John Hutton and George Robertson, both former Labour defence secretaries: There is no magic alternative to Trident – Britain has got to keep it. Pointing out that:

The Russians, as one example, are now deploying two new types of submarine-launched ballistic missiles, a new class of ballistic submarine, a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile, a new bomber and long-range cruise missiles. With this in mind, the question we should address is long term: “What kind of deterrence should we maintain for the next 50 or 60 years?”

They warn:

… let us not deceive people with false promises. Developing an alternative weapon system to Trident – such as a submarine-launched cruise missile – would be much more costly. Trident remains the most cost-effective system for the UK.  

The option of continuing with a Trident replacement programme but abandoning our continuous at-sea deterrent doctrine (CASD) would be equally unwise. CASD provides a deterrent that is immune to any first strike and so provides the maximum amount of assurance against the risks of either nuclear attack or blackmail. There is no use having this insurance policy if it only applies for some of the time. The idea that at times of tension we could scale up our patrols is also flawed. Such an escalation in the UK nuclear posture would itself only serve to heighten tensions both at home and abroad. Dropping CASD could have serious operational implications for the Royal Navy, too. This could easily contribute to a decline in the vitally important professionalism and expertise of our nuclear-equipped forces.

and conclude:

… One fact is absolutely clear: nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to our country. We must have the ability to deter such threats now and in the future. If we lose this ability, we will have fundamentally compromised our entire defence and security policies. That is a risk too far.

But a successor to Trident with enough submarine hulls to ensure CASD will not come cheap. Professor Malcolm Chalmers has been examining future defence expenditure for the RUSI think tank. He thinks that:

From 2016/17, the MoD will face a sharp rise in annual spending on the new class of nuclear missile submarines, a level of spending which will then be sustained through to the late 2020s. In contrast, procurement spending on combat air, air support, helicopters and surface ships is due to fall significantly. In order to fund increased successor spending up to 2025/26, while maintaining investment in new conventional capabilities, it may be necessary to extend the government’s commitment to annual real increases in equipment spending (a commitment that currently expires in 2020/21).

and that:

If the defence cuts announced in the 2013 spending review [due to be completed by June] are nearer to the pessimistic level of expectations, some may argue the case for a ‘mini- SDSR’, revisiting the capability plans made in 2010 in order to bring the defence plans back into balance with the reduced budget. Such a review would show that the government was prepared to take the hard decisions that are necessary in order to prevent a return to the over-programming that blighted defence planning until recently.  

Yet holding such a review in the latter half of an electoral term, while still retaining the commitment to a further post-election SDSR in mid-2015, would create its own uncertainties. It could, moreover, risk refocusing attention on the successor deterrent programme, a subject on which there is no prospect of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats agreeing before the next general election.

And cloudy prospects of a Labour and Lib Dem agreement after!

UPDATE 10 March

Mary Riddell “keeps a watchful eye on centre-left politics” for the Daily Telegraph. On 6 March e most of her article about future Labour policy, How Labour can fire a missile the Tories’ way in this cuts war, was given over to Trident replacement:

… If Labour is to ring-fence the NHS and overseas aid, as Mr Balls has undertaken, and if it will not plunder the welfare budget, then it must stray into the areas that the Tories will not touch. One obvious example is staring it in the face. Between now and 2016, Britain must decide whether to spend £25 billion replacing the four submarines that carry nuclear-tipped Trident missiles. If that like-for-like replacement goes ahead, it will swallow at least one third of the defence budget after 2020.  

While this lavish project has attracted some cross-party criticism (the former Tory defence secretary, Michael Portillo, calls it “a tremendous waste of money… done entirely for reasons of national prestige”), Labour’s view is coloured by a unilateralist, CND-badged past that it would rather erase. Despite that blip, every Labour government since the Second World War has backed the nuclear deterrent. Ernest Bevin’s endorsement of a British bomb – “We’ve got to have this thing over here, whatever it costs” – has become an article of faith for all his party’s leaders. Mr Miliband may be about to break with that.  

The Trident question is preoccupying Labour. With the Lib Dem review on alternatives due this month, protagonists are speaking out. Lord West, the “simple sailor” who advised Gordon Brown, deems the full replacement programme essential. The same case has been made in these pages by two former Labour defence secretaries, Lord Robertson and Lord Hutton. The latter is the one-time MP for Barrow, where the Vanguard submarines would be built.  

Meanwhile, a third former MoD incumbent, Lord Browne, argues that like-for-like replacement is neither strategically sound nor economically viable. Lord Wood, one of Mr Miliband’s senior strategists, has made an excellent Lords speech explaining why “multilateral disarmament is… vital to the world’s safety and security”. Assorted military figures think it beyond madness that, in an age of stateless terrorists and cyber-warriors, Britain insists on having a Cold War reliquary of armed submarines constantly at sea, their never-to-be-used missiles targeted at nothing, when even Russia has abandoned such extravagant posturing and President Obama is looking to slash the US missile stock. Lord Browne is not proposing that Trident be scrapped or that any Lib Dem plan for bargain-basement nukes be embraced. His modest suggestion is that Britain should look again at the need for Continuous At Sea Deterrence (CASD). Defence experts say that were that requirement to be reduced, the lifespan of the current fleet might be extended and Britain could ultimately make do with two new Vanguards instead of four.  

With the clashes growing more heated, Mr Miliband is reported to be signed up to backing Tory replacement plans. I am told that is “categorically” not the case. Although no decision has been taken, the Labour leader is said to be sympathetic to the ideas of Lord Browne. The Browne proposal, with its multilateralist insistence that a credible deterrent be maintained, should satisfy shadow cabinet members, defence spokesman Jim Murphy included, who proclaim themselves open to sensible alternatives.  

Trident may yet prove a defining issue, offering savings far beyond the symbolic to a leader aware that he must counter public indifference on a range of issues.  

… With the regular soldiers in the British Army reduced to the lowest number since the Napoleonic Wars, Labour might more usefully promise golden elephants on plinths for every barracks than pledge to match the Tories’ nuclear bonanza. A more modest Trident programme, though only a start, would signal that Mr Miliband can avoid the fate of social democrats, such as France’s François Hollande.

No doubt Riddell has good sources in the Labour Party, but she is less well-informed when she says that “Russia has abandoned such extravagant posturing”. Although the Bulova missile and a new class of submarines have been some time coming, these new Russian systems are now in operation.  Whether its is possible to make significant savings in the Trident replacement programme and still put to sea a deterrent worth having remains to be seen.

What would be the cost of the South West’s gain?

For a Google Blogger it can be intriguing to examine the ‘Stats’, in particular ‘Traffic sources’. These often provide details of the search which led to someone being directed to a particular post. Recently, and rather optimistically, there was an attempt to find the cost of moving Trident from Faslane to Devonport. Hopefully this particular seeker after truth bothered to read all of Would Scotland’s loss be the South West’s gain?, a recent post here on this subject, because the only cost information appeared in an Addendum, as  a quote from The Times (£):

The cost of moving Britain’s four nuclear submarines from the Faslane base on the Clyde, along with stockpiles of warheads and missiles, could be £2.5 billion, according to former senior military commanders. Admiral Lord West of Spithead, the former First Sea Lord, said that the enormous logistical challenge would help those arguing that the £20 billion Trident renewal should not go ahead.

Where Admiral Lord West obtained these figures wasn’t explained, but some light on their derivation is shed from another quarter. BASIC (British American Security Council) describes itself as “a small but influential think tank with one very large idea: we want a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons”. One of its initiatives has been to set up “set up the Trident Commission, an independent, cross-party panel to examine the United Kingdom’s nuclear weapons policy and the issue of Trident renewal”. According to its website, the Commission is under the co-chairmanship of:

Lord Browne of Ladyton (Des Browne), former Labour Secretary of State for Defence,
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, former Conservative Defence and Foreign Secretary, and
Sir Menzies Campbell, former leader of the Liberal Democrats and Shadow Foreign Secretary.
 
Other members of the Trident Commission are:
Professor Alyson Bailes, Former Head of the Security Policy Department at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former UK Ambassador to the UN
Lord Guthrie of Craigiebank, former Chief of the Defence Staff
Professor Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, Queen Mary, University College London
Lord Rees of Ludlow, Astronomer Royal and recent President of the Royal Society
Dr Ian Kearns, Chief Executive of the European Leadership Network.

What a lot of Top Kneddies! And in the usual British (though not American) way, none of these luminaries has any direct experience of submarines, missiles or things nuclear. (Incidentally, Lord Hennessy is a Professor at Queen Mary, University of London, not UCL).

Launched on 9 February 2011, the Commission has just produced its second Discussion paper, Defence-Industrial Issues: Employment, Skills, Technology and Regional Impacts, written by Keith Hartley, a retired academic with expertise in defence economics. Drawing on MoD figures (linked below), he states at paragraph 17 that:

The acquisition costs of the replacement are estimated at £20 billion to £25 billion for a four boat fleet (2011 prices: Fox, 2011; MoD, 2011). These cost estimates comprise: i) The submarines at a cost of £14.6 billion to £17.5 billion; ii) Warheads at a cost of £2.7 billion to £3.75 billion; iii) Infrastructure at a cost of £2.7 billion to £3.75 billion.

Hartley estimates that the annual running costs of the fleet of four submarines, once acquired, would be £1.1 billion (paragraph 68) so:

Aggregating acquisition and annual running costs suggests total costs for a four boat Trident replacement … of £87.4 billion over the period 2007 to 2062: hence, average annual costs of some £1.6 billion (2010/11 prices).

Although Hartley makes no such comparisons, it might be worth noting that the revenue needed to support the BBC is about £3.1 billion a year currently, and the International Development Department’s Jellbyish expenditures are about £6 billion pa. Defence in all costs about £39 billion a year.

Anyway, it’s clear from this where West’s £20 billion came from – the MoD’s minimum acquisition cost. Did Hartley shed any light on West’s other figure? Curiously, Scottish independence is mentioned in his paper, but only as a footnote to a discussion of the consequences for the Barrow-in-Furness shipyard if Trident were cancelled:

For example, if Scotland votes for independence, there might be questions about the future of the warship yards in Scotland. Current MoD policy favours retaining a UK warship building industry, including submarine construction. Scottish independence might mean that future warship building is undertaken in English shipbuilding yards, such as Barrow and Portsmouth. (page 25 footnote 29)

Perhaps the BASIC Trident Commission will be looking at the issue separately.

The National Audit Office (NAO) conducts examinations of major projects which might provide some perspective on the potential cost of re-siting Trident, if not exactly a benchmark. One such project, recently reported on, was HS1, the high speed railway between London and the Channel Tunnel. This was completed in November 2007 at a cost of £6.2 billion. HS2 comprised 68 miles (109 kilometres) of high speed railway line, twenty kilometres of tunnels under central London, a new maintenance depot, two new railway stations and refurbishing St Pancras station. 2010/11 prices could be 25% or so higher, say £7.8 billion, or about three times West’s figure.

Another NAO report in 2010 had looked at the BBC’s management of three major estate projects. One of these, the Broadcasting House project is a combination of refurbishment and new build on a site already owned by the BBC. According to the NAO, the BBC did not always follow best practice in running this project in its early stages, and presumably the outturn cost, expected to be just over £1 billion on completion in 2013, could have been lower. It is of interest in that it is a mixture of new build, re-siting and, presumably, above average technology requirements and is less than half the West figure.

Neither of these examples would suggest that £2.5 billion is a wild over- or underestimate. Using this figure, Hartley’s total costs for a four boat Trident replacement of £87.4 billion over the period 2007 to 2062 would rise to £89.9 billion (assuming that his £1.1 billion annual running costs are not significantly affected) and his average annual cost would be about £45 million higher. As Hartley explains in footnote 24 on page 22, he has chosen not to discount cash flows over time and make comparisons on a net present value (NPV) basis. This is the approach required by HM Treasury in their Green Book on Appraisal and Evaluation in Central Government. If he had, the increase in the average annual cost would have been greater.

In this context it is worth pointing out that HM Treasury are concerned that, for a variety of reasons:

The UK is an expensive place in which to build infrastructure. The weight of evidence confirms that costs are higher than in other European countries and demonstrates that, irrespective of its comparative position, there are significant opportunities to reduce costs in the delivery of infrastructure. (Infrastructure Cost Review: Main Report, paragraph 1.1)

UPDATED HERE:

http://westernindependent.blogspot.com/2012/10/update-on-royal-navys-trident.html

Would Scotland’s loss be the South West’s gain?

January 2012 marked the beginning of a long debate in Britain on Scottish independence, which will conclude with a referendum in 2014. Some complex problems are starting to emerge, among them an independent Scotland’s EU membership and what currency it would use. Another is the future of Scotland as a base for the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines and the Trident nuclear deterrent. The four Vanguard class submarines with Trident operate from Faslane, part of Her Majesty's Naval Base (HMNB) Clyde in the Firth of Clyde. Their nuclear warheads are currently stored at a facility at Coulport, nearby. The MoD is constructing a jetty at Faslane for use by the Astute-class submarines after 2017. The deterrent issue was discussed at some length by William Walker, Professor of International Relations at St Andrews University, in an article in Scotland on Sunday on 8 January. He concluded:

A Conservative-led government will be inclined to take no chances. Preserving the nuclear deterrent and Westminster’s absolute power of decision will, when attention focuses, strengthen desires to engineer the Scottish government’s resounding defeat in the referendum. But it cannot fight its corner by arguing that Trident’s survival in Scotland is cause for rejecting independence. Nor can it argue that it will impose its will, come what may.
The nuclear issue, therefore, contains political traps for both Scottish and UK governments. Don’t be surprised if they treat it warily in the referendum campaign.

A few days later in the Financial Times (£), James Blitz reported a Ministry of Defence official as saying:

Coulport is a major piece of infrastructure and it would cost billions to replace. There would certainly have to be discussions about the cost of moving that infrastructure, which would be phenomenal.

The FT also quoted Professor Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute as saying that one of the biggest concerns facing the MoD after independence was that it would take about 10 years to build a replacement storage facility for the Trident warheads. He believed that London would have to ask the government of a newly independent Scotland to continue maintaining the deterrent at Faslane and Coulport for up to a decade.

The MoD seems to be reaching similar conclusions, according to James Kirkup in the Daily Telegraph on 27 January:

The Scottish naval base currently used to arm submarines with Trident nuclear missiles is the only site suitable for the task and building another could take up to a decade, ministers have been told.
… The MoD believes Faslane’s facilities could be replicated at an existing English naval base. But the Royal Naval Armaments Depot at Coulport is unique in the UK. It is equipped with highly specialised and sensitive equipment for safely moving missiles and warheads and incorporates hardened concrete bunkers to store them. A source said: “Berths would not be a problem – there are docks on the south coast that could be used without too much fuss. But there simply isn’t anywhere else where we can do what we do at Coulport, and without that, there is no deterrent.”

Though, to make sense of the first sentence above, presumably Kirkup’s source meant “there simply isn’t anywhere else [at present]”.

In 2001 Chalmers and Walker authored Uncharted Waters - The UK, Nuclear Weapons and The Scottish Question, which anticipated the problems which are now emerging (they thought independence would arise “in the next ten or twenty years”, page161). Trident is based on the Clyde because of decisions made in the early 1960s about its predecessor, Polaris. Their book was able to draw on documents released in the 1990s by the National Archives (formerly the Public Records Office) to explain why Polaris had been located at Faslane and Coulport, and why other locations on the UK’s Atlantic seaboard had been rejected. Among the latter were Portland, Devonport and Falmouth in South West England and Milford Haven in Wales, the rest being in Scotland. In this light Chalmers and Walker went on to examine the problems posed by relocating Trident outside Scotland after independence.

Chalmers and Walker concentrated on Devonport and Falmouth as the only possibilities. Devonport would take on the Faslane role with the Coulport capability being reproduced either there or near Falmouth. Drawing on the 1960s Polaris work, they anticipated considerable safety and planning problems at both locations and estimated the cost to be at least £B2 at 2000 prices. Having ruled out overseas basing, they came to the conclusion that relocation was implausible (page 120) and turned to examining continuance in Scotland and nuclear disarmament as the only options.

At this point it is worth noting that when Chalmers and Walker were writing, shortly after the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, the UK intended to hold a stockpile of less than 200 operationally available warheads (previously a maximum of 300). In the Blair government’s 2006 Defence White Paper, The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent, Cm 6994, this figure was reduced to fewer than 160, and the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review cut it further to no more than 120. There might therefore be scope for any replacement for Coulport being on a reduced scale in comparison to the current facility. As civil engineering projects go, it would be a much smaller undertaking than HS2 or a new airport in the Thames Estuary, “Boris Island”. Again encouragingly, The Times on 7 February (£) reported that senior civil servants will be required to attend a major projects leadership academy

:“The leadership academy will provide them with the skills and tools they need to manage these programmes successfully, ensuring they are delivered on time and on budget,” [Sir Bob Kerslake, the new head of the Home Civil Service] added. The academy will be managed by the Cabinet Office’s Major Projects Authority, which was set up in 2010 to oversee big schemes. It now looks after 200 projects that are worth about £400 billion.

One might wonder if acquiring these useful skills will reduce or increase staff turnover in the civil service, given recent data from the Institute for Government.

Returning to the question posed by this post’s title, obviously, if a long-term agreement to continue basing Trident in Scotland could be secured, there would be no possibility of any benefit to South West England. However, the Scottish National Party (SNP), in its booklet Your Scotland, Your Future, states:

We’ll get rid of nuclear weapons here in Scotland as part of our commitment to a world free of the nuclear threat.

and

We’ll fund and supervise the full range of public services, preserve and develop equality and human rights, and be responsible for our own foreign affairs, defence and security. That means we can remove nuclear weapons from our shores …

One can only wonder about the external diplomatic pressures that might be brought to bear on the SNP. France, like some other European countries, for domestic reasons has little sympathy for secessionist movements anyway. If Whitehall, as a consequence of Scottish independence, had to move towards nuclear disarmament, it would leave France as the only nuclear weapon state in Europe, a status which other countries like the US and Germany, and possibly France itself, might not welcome.

So, if the SNP secured a majority for independence and entered into negotiations, they might at least offer some form of transitional period for Whitehall to make other arrangements. But the RN remaining permanently would require the SNP to offer HMNB Clyde a status akin to the Cyprus Sovereign Base Areas (a model not considered by Chalmers and Walker). Even then, Trident replacement is expected to be in service until 2055 or so (Cm 6994 Table 7-1) and the question arises as to whether an independent Scotland might one day change its mind and renege on an agreement made back in 2015. Such a prospect might lead Whitehall to conclude that a new Trident base within 10 years was an unavoidable consequence of Scottish independence.

Implicit in Chalmers and Walker’s assessment was that Trident basing in the South West would be unpopular on safety and environmental grounds and that it might be detrimental to tourism, particularly in the Falmouth area. They conceded that:

The traditional association of Plymouth and Devonport with the Royal Navy could make sustained protest from local people less likely than at an alternative site. (page 111)

However, they made no assessment of the employment opportunities which rebasing might bring. According to Wikipedia, HMNB Clyde is the base for “3,000 service personnel, 800 of their families and 4,000 civilian workers”. [All] Some [-FIRST COMMENT BELOW] of these people (certainly their jobs) would move south along with the submarines they support. In the independence negotiations Scotland might aspire to a navy the size of Denmark’s, which, if half were based on the West Coast, could have about 1500 service personnel at Faslane (IISS The Military Balance 2011, page 100). So the apparent gross gain to the South West might have to be offset by the allocation of some RN elements, not all from HMNB Devonport, to the new Scottish Navy. Nonetheless the balance would be a considerable boost to the local economy in the South West which has suffered over the last twenty years from the reductions in defence expenditure after the end of the Cold War.

One consideration which, as far as I can tell, has not been much discussed, is the situation which David Cameron would be facing as Prime Minister in 2015, just before an election, if the 2014 referendum were to favour Scottish independence. The dissolution of a union going back to 1707, however historically significant, might in fact not carry a major political price. None of the other Westminster parties will have any alternative to offer and the English (and Welsh) electorates may  not be too sorry to see the back of the Scots by the end of the independence campaign. However, over the years opinion polls have shown a majority of the population believing that the UK should retain a nuclear deterrent. A Conservative PM would almost certainly want to avoid UK nuclear disarmament on his watch and brought about almost by default. He might be expected to pursue, or at least wish to be seen to be pursuing, whatever rebasing options are available.

There are, of course, other possibilities.  However, as Walker pointed out in his January 2012 article:

… the 2007 decision to replace Trident with a “like-for-like” system is already being reconsidered in Whitehall, creating options for relocation. A Cabinet Office study of alternative systems, presided over by a Liberal Democrat minister, is under way. But it lacks sincere backing across government. For the Conservative Party, it is a harmless concession to coalition partners uncomfortable with the replacement decision. In any case, its recommendations are unlikely to affect the nuclear force’s location. The options receiving most attention – a slimmed down Trident (three boats rather than four) and adaptation of the Astute-class submarines to take “dual-capable” missiles (carrying conventional and nuclear warheads) – would not rid Scotland of nuclear weapons.

And then there is the local political situation. The westernmost part of the South West England peninsula has long provided a core of seats for the Liberal Democrats, the other constituencies, with two exceptions in Plymouth and Exeter, returning Conservatives in the 2010 election. Proposed boundary changes would have been to the LD advantage in 2010, according to number-crunching by Guardian Datastore, (below).

If the LDs go into the next election with lower poll ratings than in 2010, the Conservatives will expect to take some of their seats. How the two parties would choose to play the possibility of Trident rebasing at Devonport to their own advantage is not easy to assess. On this particular issue, voters may be pulled one way by expectations of jobs and economic benefits and the other by their perceptions of the environmental impact and nuclear safety.  For sure, by then the LDs can be expected to be looking for opportunities to differentiate themselves from their coalition partners.

Coincidentally, David Cameron visited Plymouth on 3 February. According to the local paper:

About 150 Dockyard and Naval Base workers attended a ‘PM direct’ session where they put questions to Mr Cameron. He told them: “I am a strong believer in the nuclear deterrent. The work you do here is vital.” ...
Amid moves towards a Scottish independence referendum, the Prime Minister said: “Obviously I want Scotland to vote to stay in the United Kingdom. But if Scotland wasn’t in the United Kingdom, then defence facilities would have to be based within the United Kingdom, if I can put it that way.”
… the Prime Minister’s visit halted refit work on the Trident submarine HMS Vigilant. David Cameron and his party were allowed to tour the submarine in 9 Dock without safety equipment including hard hats, after work was stopped in some areas.

So, “Would Scotland’s loss be the South West’s gain?” Recent polling suggests that a majority of voters in Scotland do not want independence and, if this is sustained until the referendum, the possibility of any gain would not arise. Otherwise, if the UK sans Scotland is to continue to be a nuclear weapon state, there doesn’t seem to be much alternative to Trident at some point in the future operating from HMNB Devonport. A suitable armaments depot would have to be constructed there, or possibly in Cornwall, say by 2025. If this turns out to be not so much ‘implausible’ as impossible, something more radical might be adopted, but probably would not be revealed until after the 2015 election. Otherwise Trident’s removal from the Clyde ought to be of considerable long-term net benefit to the economy of the South West in the form of jobs, and expenditure by households and on base support.

ADDENDUM 18 FEBRUARY

On 16 February David Cameron gave a speech in Edinburgh making the case for the Union. The Times (£) report the following day included the following:

… The Prime Minister’s gambit of promising Scots more devolution came amid warnings that Britain’s nuclear deterrent would be put at risk if Scotland voted for independence. The cost of moving Britain’s four nuclear submarines from the Faslane base on the Clyde, along with stockpiles of warheads and missiles, could be £2.5 billion, according to former senior military commanders.
Admiral Lord West of Spithead, the former First Sea Lord, said that the enormous logistical challenge would help those arguing that the £20 billion Trident renewal should not go ahead.
“There must be a real possibility that it would be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back in keeping an independent deterrence,” he said. …

ADDENDUM 30 MARCH

A newer post looks at the cost issue further.

ADDENDUM 25 OCTOBER

Also see http://westernindependent.blogspot.com/2012/10/update-on-royal-navys-trident.html