Anti-nuclear campaigners have responded to Labour’s 2019 manifesto.
Kate Hudson, CND general secretary, said:
“Labour’s manifesto is a missed opportunity to address the growing threat of nuclear war, a threat as serious and urgent as the climate crisis.
“The manifesto commits a future Labour government to the old cold war status quo on nuclear weapons. Replacing the Trident submarines – at a cost of at least £205 billion -means Britain possessing nuclear weapons for many decades to come, weapons which are already rendered obsolete as a result of technological advances, new forms of warfare and changing security threats.
“Labour’s policy also ignores the UN’s nuclear ban treaty, which is the culmination of years of heroic work carried out by dozens of states. So significant is the achievement that the people behind it were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. Instead, Labour ignores this and says it’s committed to the five-decade old nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which most experts agree has reached a dead-end on nuclear abolition.
“In many other respects, this is a radical manifesto taking a fresh look at many urgent problems for the United Kingdom, so why the business as usual, twentieth century approach to nuclear weapons?”