This is a disgraceful response from @JoSwinson. Not for the 1st time in this general election, she confirms she's ready to press the nuclear button. Not even a moment's hesitation about the prospect of killing millions of people. We need better than this#ITVDebate #VoteOutNukes pic.twitter.com/W84cuLTuoy— CND (@CNDuk) 19 November 2019
*****************
THE Lib Democrat leader Jo Swinson has been heavily criticised by CND and others for saying that she would press the nuclear button if she became the next Prime Minister. During an interview with itvNEWS, she was asked: "Would you ever be prepared to use a nuclear weapon?" Without any hesitation, Swinson says "Yes." The female interviewer then replies: "That was a brilliant short answer, thank you very much."
She was then asked: "Which world leader would you call first, if you became Prime Minister?"
Swinson, replies: "Jacinda Ardern".
Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand Prime Minister, opposes the use of nuclear weapons and supports nuclear disarmament. Despite the serious consequences of nuclear war and being capable of killing millions of people at a whim, Swinson still managed to keep a smile on her face. Is this clueless numpty head, fit to be Prime Minister?
************
Posts
3 comments:
The questions here relate to Jo Swinson's attitude to the use of nuclear weapons as a deterrent if she had occasion to make the decision to use them. Everything here depends on having the weapons in the first place & then for her being prepared to use them. Would Blanco Posnet have prefered her to say that she would not have been prepared to use them? What sort of deterrence would that represent to any potential enemy?
Meanwhile,Jeremy Corbyn is still trying to live down the comments he made in September 2015 and again in May 2017, he said that he would never 'press the nuclear button' – and therefore in a prime minister’s famous ‘letter of last resort’ to Trident submarine commanders, he would not authorise them to fire their nuclear missiles in any circumstances.
This is rather like him having a vibrator & not using a battery when he applies it!
There is some doubt as to how independent a deterrent Trident is, and whose finger is really on the button. I've put a link in the piece that seems to argue that Trident is an American weapons system and that they retain the codes for the operating system. The last time Britain acted independently was the Anglo/Frech Suez crisis in I956 to regain control of the Suez Canal and to get rid of Nasser. The war didn't last long, didn't achieve its stated aims and the PM , Anthony Eden resigned shortly after, ostensibly, on the grounds of ill health.Since Suez, Britain as largely played a subservient role to American interests.
Blanco Posnet regarding 'deterrence' says: Since Suez 'Britain has largely played a subservient role to American interests.'
This claim runs counter to what Milan Rai [editor of Peace News] writes in a recent essay entitled 'The propaganda model & the British nuclear debate'. In this essay he provides us with a list of incidents in which he claims British nuclear weapons have been 'used':
1) In 1961, Briain created a phoney crisis in the Persian Gulf and mobilised its military forces to intimidate Iraq and the region.
2) In Malta, British strategic nuclear bombers were placed on alert. Historian, Anthony Verrier, later described the incident as an 'act of deterence, in which the nuclear weapons system played a central, concealed role... directed against Nasser and, by extention, Russian ambitions in Arabia'.
3) On 20th, March 2002, the then British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons Defence Select Committee ... that states like Iraq 'can be absolutely confident that in the right conditions we would be willing to use our nuclear weapons'.
4) Milan Rai writes: 'Other countries have been subject to British nuclear threats. In its early years, the Britsh strategic force was airborne, carried by Valiant, Vulcan and Victor aircraft'. These 'V-bombers made hundereds of flights in the 1950s and 1960s across the British Empire.
5) In 1962, V-bombers attended independence ceremonies in Uganda and Jamaice.
6) Victors from Bomber Command were deployed to Singapore in December 1963, during Britain's 'confrontation' with Indonesia. The historian Andrew Brookes says these nuclear bombers were kept in Singapore longer than usual, 'positioned to be seen as ready to eliminate Indonesia Air Force capabilities if they launched air attackes.' Brookes did not say what kind of bombs might have been used to carry out this 'elimination'.
Post a Comment