UK Labour Party to Vote on Scrapping Nuclear Weapons

For six decades, British governments have considered unilateral nuclear disarmament unthinkable — but the once-unthinkable is the Labour Party's new normal.

Britain's main opposition party has just elected a leader from the radical left, and this week party members may commit a future Labour government to scrapping Britain's Trident nuclear arms program.

It's the latest signal that new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is prepared to consider policies that were off the agenda for decades, from nationalizing industry to diverging on foreign policy from the United States.

"My views on Trident are very well known," Corbyn said Sunday, as Labour's annual conference opened in the seaside resort of Brighton — with a debate on nuclear weapons scheduled for the first time in many years.

"I want us to fulfill our obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — hence non-renewal of Trident," he said, AP reported.

The conference debate is a victory for anti-nuclear activists like Kate Hudson, secretary-general of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, who says a vote to scrap nuclear arms would bring Labour policy "in line with the needs of the age — and of the British people."

But it's a source of despair for Labour centrists, who think the party faces electoral oblivion under Corbyn.

John McTernan, a former aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair, claims that nuclear weapons are "deeply and broadly supported" by British voters.

"So to make the centerpiece of your first conference a turn towards unilateralism is a resounding signal to the public that you don't want to be a party of government," he said.

The divide between pro- and anti-nuclear forces has long been a fault-line in the Labour Party. It was Prime Minister Clement Attlee's Labour government that developed atomic weapons in the years following World War II, making Britain the world's third nuclear-armed state after the United States and the Soviet Union.

Every British government since then — Labour, Conservative or coalition — has maintained nuclear weapons. Since the 1990s, Britain's nuclear deterrent has consisted of four Royal Navy submarines armed with Trident missiles.

The outcome of the conference vote is hard to predict. Corbyn is a lifelong opponent of nuclear weapons, but several in his top team disagree. Labour defense spokesman Hilary Benn said last week that he wanted to see a nuclear-free world, "but I don't believe for one second that if Britain were to give up its deterrent any other of the nuclear states would give theirs up.