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.

The two Eds: smoke and fire or neither?

The majority of us, far from the inner circles of politics as we are, can only glean what is going on from what we are told by the media. Much of that is fed to us, directly or indirectly, by an army of media handlers and is intended to manipulate our opinions rather than to inform us. On the other hand, more than ever before there are numerous accounts what actually went on in the not too distant past available in the form of diaries and memoirs. So, although we have to pick our way through what is presented to us day by day, we probably have better tools for intelligent and sceptical scrutiny than people had even twenty years ago.

As an example, consider the story by Andrew Pierce in the Mail on Sunday on 2 September about poor relations between Leader of the Opposition Ed Miliband and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, The Ed to Ed feud that could wreck Miliband's No10 dream. The article is well worth reading in full, but some key extracts are:

Earlier this year, as Ed Miliband launched into one of his long-winded speeches to his shadow cabinet, everyone at least tried to create the impression they were giving the Labour leader their undivided attention. But there was one notable exception, a man who made no effort to conceal the fact the Labour leader had lost the interest of the room. Ed Balls, the pugnacious shadow chancellor and devout disciple of Gordon Brown, was nonchalantly reading and sending messages on his BlackBerry while Mr Miliband droned on. As Mr Balls tapped away, indifferent to the embarrassment of colleagues and anger of the Labour leader, Mr Miliband asserted his authority and snapped: ‘Ed, people can be just as interesting as BlackBerries . . .’ The spat was the latest sign that the relationship between the two men is breaking down both in public and private. They neither like nor trust each other and, crucially, Mr Balls thinks he could do Mr Miliband’s job much better. …  

But the poisonous history between the Eds goes back to the early days of the Blair era, when they were youthful advisers to Mr Brown after he became shadow chancellor in 1994 and then Chancellor in 1997. … Mr Balls was economics adviser, while Mr Miliband was a mere special adviser. Ed Balls, now 45, loved to lord it over his staff, just as he does today. Colleagues at the time recall he treated Mr Miliband, 42, like the ‘office boy’. Mr Balls liked Mr Miliband to make his coffee every morning. ‘He loved to bark out “coffee time”,’ says one well-informed source. ‘Ed sheepishly got up to make it.’ …  

Today as leader it is, of course, Mr Miliband who is more senior. It is he who plays the role of ‘chairman’, summing up the views of his colleagues at the end of shadow cabinet meetings. But, tellingly, this happens only after he has invited Mr Balls to give his verdict on the contributions made by other members of the shadow cabinet to any meeting. The result is that Mr Balls sometimes talks for three times as long as Mr Miliband. ‘A fly on the wall would assume Balls was leader,’ says one witness to the proceedings. …  

It should have been a marriage of equals between leader and shadow chancellor. They are both Oxford educated. Mr Balls studied at Harvard and Mr Miliband taught there. But increasingly these days whether it is in meetings or on the telephone, Mr Balls talks over his leader. It infuriates Mr Miliband but he does little other than shrug his shoulders and say: ‘That’s Ed.’ …  

But the problems between them go beyond personal ambition and resentment over the handling of the shadow chancellor portfolio. Mr Miliband is trying to detoxify the Labour brand so damaged by infighting between Blair and Brown. Labour pollsters have identified Gordon Brown’s term in Number 10 as a ‘huge negative’ for the party’s election prospects. And no one in the Labour Party is more closely associated with Mr Brown than Ed Balls. …  

One party figure said: ‘The two Eds have a fundamental disagreement over the City but Balls is making the running and bullying Miliband’s people into submission on a range of policies. ‘It began with Labour’s spending commitments, but now we have to get permission from the shadow chancellor’s office on everything from the future of Trident [nuclear missiles] to keeping open police stations at weekends. Power has shifted from one end of the shadow cabinet table to the other.’  

It is an uncanny echo of the Blair and Brown relationship. And the question is whether it will fester in the same way — and once again tear the Labour party apart.

So, what to make of this? Of course the Mail is a Conservative-supporting newspaper. It must be expected to run stories unhelpful to Labour, particularly in the hope of Labour’s opinion poll lead being dislodged by post-Olympics feel-good and all the positive spin that can be wrapped around the Coalition reshuffle. At the same time, how better to take the heat off a beleaguered Chancellor than to turn it up on his Shadow? Certainly at PMQs on 5 September David Cameron took up the opportunity presented by Pierce’s article:

The Prime Minister: First, I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the issue of Chancellors, because I have got my first choice as Chancellor, while he has got his third choice as shadow Chancellor. Apparently, he still has to bring in the coffee every morning—that is how assertive and butch the Leader of the Opposition really is. … 

Edward Miliband: The difference between the shadow Chancellor and the Chancellor is that the shadow Chancellor was right about the economy and the Chancellor was wrong. …

The Prime Minister: … He praised his shadow Chancellor to the gunnels, but let us remember that it was the shadow Chancellor who landed us in this mess. Who was the City Minister when the City went bust? The shadow Chancellor. Who was the man who gave us the biggest budget deficit in the developed world? The shadow Chancellor. That is what that team has delivered and that is why the British people will never trust them again. …  

The Prime Minister: The big difference in British politics is that I do not want to move my Chancellor; the right hon. Gentleman cannot move his shadow Chancellor. The fact is that in spite of all the economic difficulty this is a strong and united Government, and in spite of all the opportunity this is a weak and divided Opposition.

On the other hand, Pierce has his reputation to protect so his references to:

Senior party figures are talking openly  

Colleagues at the time …

says one well-informed source.

One shadow cabinet source said 

The Miliband camp fears 

Blairites wryly observe  

One party figure said

are likely to have some substance and look as though they come from individuals close to Miliband. Mary Riddell had followed the Mail story up in the Daily Telegraph (another Tory-inclined paper) on 4 September in a thoughtful article (again worth reading in full) which, somewhat surprisingly, sought to redress the balance. Indeed, she gave the impression of having spoken to persons close to Balls:

The wars convulsing the Tories and the Lib Dems are supposedly being mirrored by a struggle between Ed Miliband and his pugnacious shadow chancellor, Ed Balls. The evidence for this stand-off is somewhat slight. Reports that Mr Balls sends messages on his BlackBerry while the leader is addressing shadow cabinet, and that he hogs the floor, are less than incendiary. Mr Balls is indeed an inveterate texter whose meeting room etiquette may leave something to be desired. None of that is new. …  

The shadow chancellor, capable of inspiring both loyalty and loathing, is a textbook villain. To those who do not like or trust him, he remains Gordon Brown’s “kneecapper”. Yet Mr Balls’s insistence that any policy with a cost attached should be cleared with him is indeed imperative, according to allies who point out that the worsening economic situation means that Labour cannot make any new spending promises for after 2015. Minor disgruntlement on some colleagues’ part has, supporters say, been blown up into a baseless storm. Certainly, the two Eds are not re-enacting the Blair/Brown campaign of mutually assured destruction. …  

And yet the rumours are not entirely baseless. Where Blair and Brown could stake out separate fiefdoms, with Mr Brown (or Mr Balls) calling the economic shots, now the economy is all that matters. That leaves the Eds encamped on the same terrain. No one disputes that there are differences. A Balls ally describes the divides as small and bridgeable, but another observer cites “real tensions and problems”. The latest poll lead, down to six per cent, gives little cause for complacency …  

Labour’s attempts to reforge a one-nation Britain will depend on the alignment of Planet Miliband and Planet Balls. That confluence will, in turn, mean determining exactly where power lies. The interests of both Eds, not to mention the party and the country, may rest on just how assertive the leader is prepared to be. Mr Miliband cannot afford the creeping perception, expressed by one insider, that he “is physically and mentally intimidated” by Mr Balls. While both men would dispute that impression, it is now incumbent on them to demonstrate its untruth.

And if we turn to the diaries and memoirs? An insight into life on Planet Balls during the Labour government comes from Alastair Campbell’s Diaries – for those who lack the stamina to reach down all four volumes, the index pages for Volumes 3 and 4 for “Balls, Ed” are shown below (left and right), and the tone of many of the entries is probably enough. One gets the impression of Campbell’s heart sinking whenever Balls came into sight. The entry “has a civilised discussion with AC” was presumably so rare an occurrence as to merit being recorded for posterity!

A broader perspective can be found in the Epilogue in Alistair Darling’s memoir of his time as Gordon Brown’s Chancellor from 2007 to 2010, Back from the Brink:

Perhaps most damaging, for Gordon in particular, but for all of us in the end, was that he surrounded himself with a cadre of people whose preoccupation was the removal of Tony Blair and the installation of Gordon Brown. They had their own reasons, some political, others personal, but blind loyalty meant that Gordon was only told that which he wanted - or could bear - to hear and that meant, ultimately, that he was ill-served. Speaking truth to power never came into it.  

It would be wrong to claim that there was a plot to get rid of Tony Blair; there was no plot. A plot is secret. This was an open campaign, and as far as the Brownite cabal was concerned, you were with them or against them. It was a fairly brutal regime, and many of us fell foul of it. After Gordon became Prime Minister, the cabal sought fresh enemies and as chancellor I quickly found myself in the firing line. Their underhand tactics, particularly the continuous briefings and leaks to the media, were difficult to bear and were also incredibly damaging to the reputation of the party. Tony and Gordon dominated the Labour party for more than ten years and were an overwhelming force for good, but by the end their feud allowed a cancer to grow which, I believe, contributed to our defeat in 2010. The lessons of this crisis have yet to be fully Iearned and the consequences of what happened are still playing out. (pages 322/323)

All of which leads me to conclude that the smoke isn’t concocted and to suspect fire. After all, I can remember people telling me a few decades ago that newspaper stories about the problems between Prince Charles and Princess Diana were invented, and something similar about the early reports of the Blair-Brown feud. In fact, while the reports in the media may not always have been accurate or complete, the underlying sense of the situation in both cases wasn’t too far from what turned out eventually to have been the reality.


ADDENDUM 6 September

Ed Balls was interviewed today for the Independent by Steve Richards and Andrew Grice, and dismissed the subject discussed above as “complete and utter, total garbage”. In more detail:

… There have been reports of seething tensions between the "two Eds" over policy and Balls' apparent rudeness towards Miliband in Shadow Cabinet meetings. His version is expansive and unequivocal.  

"I came back from holiday and discovered while Ed was also on holiday we are having this big dispute. It was more laughable than concerning. I got back on Sunday and we spent an hour and a half together three days running, talking about what we are doing and where we are going and we spent very little time talking about these stories because they are complete and utter, total garbage."  

The Shadow Chancellor dismisses the stories by placing their complex relationship in a much wider context –the now openly-admitted running battle between the two Eds' former bosses Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. "We are two of the people who in the last Government were trying to fix problems with Alastair Campbell and others. We have learnt from all those problems. The reality with me and Ed is that if there's a problem we sort it out between us because we have the sort of relationship where we can sit down in a room and resolve it and that's how it will be. If there's anyone – whether its Conservatives… or any other noises offs who think their briefings can become a self-fulfilling prophecy by inventing this kind of stuff – we will prove them totally and utterly wrong."  

One allegation, that presumably came from within the Shadow Cabinet, is that Balls ostentatiously consults his BlackBerry while Miliband speaks at length to his frontbench team. Balls jokes about the habit and suggests he is by no means the most addicted to the device. "I was the first person who informed the Leader of Opposition during a Shadow Cabinet meeting a year or so ago about the forthcoming Royal Wedding. All of us are a bit guilty of using our BlackBerry but Yvette [Cooper, Balls' wife] said to me: 'Me and Douglas [Alexander, Shadow Foreign Secretary] are far worse than you!' "

Readers might be forgiven for concluding that Balls’ recollection of his relationship with Campbell is as shaky as his wife’s grammar. The article concludes:

Today Miliband and Balls speak at a special conference on economic policy. Balls describes it as one of several "stepping stones" towards the next election, in which they seek to frame and win the "intellectual" as well as the political debate. More Labour policy detail will come next year, as Labour combines Miliband's "responsible capitalism" agenda with the party's traditional goal of redistributing wealth. "We need to look at the rules that govern competition, corporate governance. They need work in a long- term way. But for a route to a fairer society the minimum wage and tax credits are essential."  

Whether the "two Eds" succeed in navigating the "stepping stones" together is one of the biggest questions in British politics. For sure, they are fully aware of the fatal consequences if they fail to do so. ...

ADDENDUM 7 September

The Independent has come back to the subject again today, this time in the form of an opinion piece from its chief political commentator, Steve Richards. Although headed Ed and Ed won't split – they know there's too much at stake and sub-headed There will be no repeat of the Blair/Brown rivalry that still traumatises Labour, what follows is a little more ambivalent by the end:

The relationship between Ed Miliband and Ed Balls is the most important in British politics. David Cameron and George Osborne are in power but their relationship is settled and fully formed. As close friends, they have set their course. The more complex and less harmonious relationship between the two Eds evolves with big strategic and policy decisions still to take. If they can make the partnership work, Labour's chances of winning the next election will be high. If they fail to do so, Labour will lose, irrespective of the Coalition's obvious failings.  

The media tends to frame the present by what has happened in the immediate past. In the case of Miliband and Balls, the temptation to present the duo as a repeat of the Blair/Brown rivalry is proving irresistible, not least because the parallels are obvious. Like Brown, Balls was the more senior figure when the leadership vacancy arose. Like Blair and Brown, the two Eds are two contrasting personalities.  

… Unlike Cameron and Osborne, they are not close. When Miliband left the Treasury for a year in the US, he told friends it was to get a break from Balls as much as from Brown. Not surprisingly, given his experience and range, Balls would at some point like to be leader and Prime Minister. Miliband is nervily aware of this and gets worked up when he reads that Balls is the real leader of the Labour Party. 

So there are the outlines of a potential collapse of a relationship even before an election is won. For their part, Blair and Brown won three. Yet the parallel is too easy and superficial. It does not stand up to closer scrutiny. The differences between the Blair/Brown relationship and the one between the two Eds are far more marked and significant than the similarities. If I were Cameron and Osborne, I would not count on a major split. 

… In terms of ministerial pasts and proximity to power, the two of them are the most experienced leader of the Opposition and shadow Chancellor for decades. Unlike most such duos, they also have a big chance of winning an election after a single term. Given this benevolent context, they will have only themselves to blame if they give fatal ammunition to malevolent internal briefers who only help Cameron and Osborne, the duo who prove that genuine friendship does not guarantee a smooth political ride.