FORMER Labour minister Tom Harris yesterday became the latest figure to slam Scottish Labour’s decision to support the scrapping of Trident.
The ex MP for Glasgow South hit out at the development suggesting he was “giving up” on the party, after the vote at its conference on Sunday and also following Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader and his subsequent appointment of fellow nuclear weapons opponent John McDonnell as shadow chancellor.
“So that’s it,” said Harris on his Facebook page.
“Labour has jumped the shark. It has gone from ‘a bit bonkers’ to ‘irredeemable’ in the space of a single day.
“And I give up. That’s it for me. Giving. Up.”
Harris, who was one of 40 Labour MPs to lose their seats in Scotland at May’s General Election, later told a journalist he was not giving up his party membership.
The result of the vote in Perth in favour of a motion opposing Trident renewal was supported by more than 70 per cent of delegates to the Scottish Labour conference. The move puts policy north of the border at odds with the UK party’s official position.
But yesterday the decision, which means that Scottish Labour’s policy is to oppose the replacement of the system, was also implicitly criticised by Lord Kinnock, the former Labour leader who introduced the party’s multilateral position more than 25 years ago.
“The debate is wide open,” he said.
“What I do know is the British people will not vote for unilateral disarmament. And that reality has to be dealt with.”
The vote also means Corbyn and Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale – who until yesterday supported a multilateral approach but last night changed her position when she voted for a motion in Holyrood supporting non renewal of the Clyde based nuclear weapons – are opposed to the UK party policy.
According to a UK Government estimate the cost of renewing the nuclear missile system based at Faslane and Coulport would cost an estimated £167 billion.
A vote in the Commons is due to take place over the coming months, with SNP MPs to vote against.
Labour’s only Scots MP Ian Murray has also said he will oppose replacing the weapons’s system in the vote.
Meanwhile, former Treasury minister Liam Byrne will use a speech this week to issue a warning that Corbyn’s economic plans are doomed to failure. “I don’t like what some call ‘Corbynomics’ because printing money, nationalising things, and spiralling public spending simply isn’t going to work,” he will say in a speech this week, according to The Times.
“We need to offer an approach based on the common good, not class war.”
However, Lord Kinnock insisted Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell were right to set out an alternative economic approach to George Osborne.
The National View: Trident would be no use to deal with the tragedy of Syria
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