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Trident delay by the Coalition: Cunning plan, or bad idea?

Depends whether you pay taxes or spend them

Forces don't want to pay for nukes - well, duh. (They probably don't want to pay for child benefit either, but nobody's asking them to do that.)

Last time, the MoD was not compelled to pay anything for Trident - extra cash was provided by the Treasury. Thus the Army and RAF had no axe to grind, and the Navy only had to pay some of the running costs. As a result there was no opposition to Trident from within the armed services.

This time, the situation at the MoD is very different. The coming ten-year budget is already short of the MoD's projections of what it needs to pay for existing forces and procurement plans by a large amount - billions each year. This, in large part, is the result of several decades in which time and again ministers delayed expensive decisions - just as they are considering delays to Trident now - causing things to cost a lot more than they should have done.

On top of the need to cut many billions off the existing plans, there is also now a need to cut the already-insufficient budget by 10 per cent or more due to the wider public-finances crisis.

If as well as all this the Trident replacement goes ahead on schedule, it will mean even more severe pain for the three services: battalions disbanded and new FRES supertanks not bought for the Army, jet fleets closed down and Eurofighters left without the desired enhancements for the RAF, perhaps no aircraft carriers and fewer attack subs and frigates for the navy.

Unsurprisingly, all three services have come to the internal opinion that if they have to pay for new Trident, they don't want it. Even the Navy would much rather have more Astute subs and nuclear Tomahawks to go on them than new Tridents: it would offer at least as many chances to be a submarine captain, and it would remove the boredom and career-deadening effect of tours aboard ballistic-missile boats*.

Politically, of course, everyone in the Coalition would be overjoyed with a postponement on Trident. At the moment the Coalition is committed only to some form of nukes, not to new Trident as such. The cheaper cruise plan would find strong support in Parliament, not just from Lib Dems but from many Labour MPs who are personally anti-nuclear in their beliefs regardless of the party platform. Labour would probably not be so principled as to whip these MPs into backing the Tories in a Commons vote on the matter, despite their promises before the election.

The Tory party itself made a firm commitment to new Trident just as Labour did, so it's hard to see Prime Minister Cameron feeling able to renege outright on that in this Parliament - but he might well feel that it would be possible to switch to the cruise plan after the next election, following postponement now. A lot of his own MPs (particularly, perhaps, the noticeable number of former junior Army officers now on the Tory benches) might back him in this.

Thus it isn't too much to say that Trident is a potential Coalition-buster if the government seeks to go ahead with it on time. A decision that some future government will have to spend several billion more than planned is as easy as pie by comparison.

Given the pressure from the MoD and the Coalition cabinet in favour of postponement, it will be quite surprising if Cameron has the guts to do what he promised and what most of the electorate voted for - replace Trident like-for-like on time.

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