THE debate was expected, and the result anticipated, but the vote on Trident at the Scottish Labour party conference is still a hugely significant event with the potential to change the political landscape. By an overwhelming majority, delegates voted to support scrapping the nuclear deterrent, calling the weapons, which are based on the Clyde, a moral threat to humanity's survival.
There are now a number of potential consequences for Labour and for the SNP. As a result of the motion, Scottish Labour now finds itself in the curious position of supporting the unilaterally scrapping of Trident but being led by Kezia Dugdale who takes a different view, while at the UK level, the position is reversed with the UK party supporting Trident renewal while its leader Jeremy Corbyn is opposed.
This divergence between the Scottish and UK parties could be perfectly fine in principle – indeed, Ms Dugdale has received credit for promoting genuine debate at conference. But how will the fact that Scottish Labour has a different view from the UK party go down with voters at next year's elections? And with polls showing most Scots support the retention of Trident anyway, would Scottish Labour's new policy win it any votes? A party should listen to its members, but it needs to listen to the public too.
The potential consequences for the SNP are also interesting. A vote to scrap Trident, together with other policies such as restoring tax credits, amounts to Labour laying down a radical challenge to the SNP. The Scottish Government keeps saying it is radical, and it has attracted widespread support from voters on the left, but if Scottish Labour genuinely supports radical left policies, that could help expose the fact that, in reality, the SNP talks radical but behaves cautiously and exists pretty much on the pragmatic centre ground.
Will the SNP be worried about this? Maybe not. It may be that a more left-leaning Labour party will begin to win votes back, particularly in Scotland, but the leadership of the SNP might also take comfort from the fact that elections are won not on the left, but in the centre, even in Scotland, and remain exactly where they are. The SNP's calculation in private could be that Labour heading left might win it back a few votes but not win it any elections, although whether it would acknowledge any of that in public is another matter. If there is going to be a problem for the SNP, it will be that it will be much harder for them to talk radical with Labour on their left flank and a Tory party on their right pushing for lower taxes.
On the issue of the nuclear deterrent itself, Scottish Labour has taken something of a gamble that the vote will go down well with the public. The party has now taken a clear moral position on the issue, but it will also have to demonstrate that it can come up with a detailed economic plan for dealing with the economic and social effects of scrapping Trident. A plan to get rid of Trident without a strategy for replacing the thousands of jobs that rely on it is unlikely to be popular.
However, even for those who do worry about the economic consequences of scrapping Trident, there are questions about the size and cost of the weapons. Unilateral disarmament would be a risky move in an uncertain world, but, at a time when the armed forces are so stretched, is a £167billion bill for renewal justified, particularly when we were originally told it would be £20bn? The consequences of Scottish Labour's support for scrapping Trident remain to be seen, but the debate about its scale and cost must continue.
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