Over half of Labour’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidates (PPCs) are in favour scrapping the Trident nuclear weapons system, a survey has found. The ComRes poll, carried out for the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme, showed 51% of surveyed candidates want to see ‘Scrapping Trident’ become an official Labour manifesto commitment ahead of the general election in 2015.
Tomorrow (Monday) CND will host three such anti-Trident PPCs, along with MPs and MEPs, at a Labour Conference fringe event titled Rethink Trident: the 2015 manifesto debate (6pm, Monday 22 September, Arora Hotel, Manchester).
CND General Secretary Kate Hudson said:
‘It is great to see the Labour Party waking up to the absurdity of spending £100bn on a Cold War relic. There is massive opposition to squandering taxpayers’ money on a weapons system designed for a different age, which couldn’t possibly be used: especially when vital public services are facing the axe.
‘The Parliament elected in May next year will be responsible for taking a decision of enormous importance: whether or not to lock the UK into the nuclear weapons game for another 30 to 40 years. It is a huge relief to learn that so many of Labour’s Parliamentary Candidates have thought this issue through.
‘The British public doesn’t want to see the NHS sacrificed on the altar of supposed “international standing”: we want to see our money spent on the things we need. The NHS is facing an annual funding gap of £2bn, and yet we waste more than £2bn every year just running the current Trident system. To most people that is just unbelievable, as well as having a very real human cost.
‘Trident does nothing to counter the actual threats facing the UK like terrorism and climate change: and the sooner all Westminster parties learn that scrapping Trident is a vote winner, the better.’