Scottish Labour to vote on abolishing Trident nuclear deterrent
This Writer welcomes Jeremy Corbyn’s criticisms of the SNP’s record in Scotland, which closely resemble my own.
The Scottish Labour party is to vote on abolishing Britain’s nuclear deterrent after delegates voted heavily in favour of a debate on the Trident missile system.
The decision to debate cancelling Trident’s replacement at Scottish Labour’s annual conference this weekend came as activists applauded calls from Jeremy Corbyn for the party to embrace “the sunshine of socialism”.
On Friday, delegates overwhelmingly backed calls from constituency parties to hold a potentially divisive vote on Trident’s renewal on Sunday: the party’s leadership is split on the issue, with unions and MSPs at loggerheads.
In his first speech to Scottish Labour as leader of the UK party, Corbyn attacked the Scottish National party’s track record in government in the runup to next May’s Holyrood elections, insisting only Labour had a vision for a more equal Scotland.
He said true equality of opportunity had been stifled under the SNP, with nearly a million Scots in fuel poverty, cuts in college places, and people born in the poorest wards likely to die decades earlier than those born in the richest – a fact he called “a national scandal”.
But in a reference to Labour’s dire popularity ratings in Scotland, with polls giving it just 22% of the vote against more than 50% for the SNP, Corbyn admitted the party faced a challenge in overcoming the widely-held view that Labour was “too distant, too remote”.
Source: Scottish Labour to vote on abolishing Trident nuclear deterrent | Politics | The Guardian
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The issue of Trident needs to be debated nationally.
This is simply electioneering for next year’s Scottish elections. Corbyn was not allowed to have/decided not to have any debate on Trident during the full Labour Party conference, although he himself is against renewal. It matters not one jot what the Labour Party’s Scottish conference comes up with. They will be outnumbered by the central party’s membership.
Of course it’s electioneering; the SNP’s promises will be for exactly the same purpose.
You are wrong about Corbyn not being allowed to make any decision on Trident at the national conference – it would have been a decision for the Party to make (that’s democracy), and the Party decided not to have the debate.
The Scottish Labour Party has decided it will have the debate, and any decision will weigh on the national decision in the future.