Missile Gaps

The future of Britain's independent American nuclear deterrent, which has helped to keep Europe peaceful despite successive grave threats from Communism, the Common Market and Gorbymania, is being questioned by a cross-party group of MPs. According to their report, the Government has failed to inform Parliament about the cost of replacing Trident, has not justified the tearing hurry to make a decision now, and has not indicated who, in the present generational war for freedom against suicidal religious fanatics, the replacement is intended to deter. It is possible that the MPs have also been taken aback by Tony's recent leg-humping effort to gain Britain the privilege of being used as a launching pad for the Bush administration's Star Wars: The Sequel boondoggle (The Empire Strikes Back against the Phantom Menace), despite the Bush administration's obvious preference for Eastern Europe.

The report also notes that ministers claim Britain maintains a "minimum deterrent" without explaining what it means. This is obviously a spectacular missing of the point of Blairism, whereby phrases are selected less for any fancy semantic content than for sounding vaguely desirable in a context of globally considered fiscal prudence and responsively flexible moral responsibility. Hence the Government's declared policy of using nuclear weapons only in "self-defence", or in "extreme circumstances", or possibly in defence of "vital interests", or whenever God and the Pentagon consider it expedient to do so.

The Government is further taken to task for "failing to explain how its plans are compatible with its commitment to nuclear non-proliferation", particularly given that the Government has promised to reduce the stockpile of warheads without changing the number of warheads deployed by the Royal Naval Submersible branch of the American nuclear arsenal. It is not clear how this policy would make us more secure than Israel, which we are informed lives in a state of permanent existential threat despite having the only known nuclear weapons in the Middle East; nor yet how it would demonstrate a greater commitment to non-proliferation than Iran, which manages to be a looming threat to the region and the world despite being five to ten years from developing a viable bomb.

In response, a spokesbeing for the Ministry of Defence said that procurement costs for the Trident replacement would amount to "about 0.1% of GDP". So that settles that.