The battle-to-come for Helensburgh gets more interesting as Lib Dems declare against Trident 2
published this on 11:57 pm, Tuesday, 16th June, 2009Community News| Environment| defence | Comments (rss) | Respond | Ping |
In what has been called the resurrection of nuclear politics, Lib Dem Leader, Nick Clegg has taken his party firmly into an Anti-Trident stance. His commitment is fuelled by financial priorities – seeing far greater economic return on an alternative use of the minimum of £20 billion replacing Trident will cost. On defence grounds – as supported by several senior miltary figures – Mr Clegg also sees Trident as an inappropriate response to the UK’s defence needs today.
This means that the next general election contest for the Argyll and Bute seat will see all three main candidates representing parties opposing the replacement of Trident. The Conservative Leader, David Cameron, has already distanced his party from the project. Now the Lib Dems have followed suit; and the Scottish National Party has, from the outset, set itself against the introduction to Scotland of second generation Trident nuclear weapons.
This means that Helensburgh residents can look forward to serious arguments and persuasions from all three candidates. The town has the single biggest population in Argyll by a very wide margin. Its local economy is heavily dependant on the nearby naval establishment at Faslane which is to be the UK’s sole nuclear submarine base.
The Conservative candidate, Gary Mulvaney is one of Helensburgh’s representatives on Argyll and Bute Council and is leader of the Conservative group – the opposition – within the Council. With an already energetically-argued support for Trident, Mr Mulvaney will have some tricky choreography to perform on the issue, given his national Leader’s stance.
Mike Mackenzie, the Scottish National Party candidate, would seem philosophically attuned to his party’s resolute opposition to Trident 2. Mr Mackenzie’s challenge will be to convince the voters of Helensburgh that the Faslane base has a secure future without the Trident replacement and the case he puts forward will need to be watertight.
The sitting tenant, so to speak, Alan Reid, the Lib Dem MP currently representing the constituency, has, by a curious coincidence chosen to site his second home (his main home is in the constituency at Dunoon) – not in London but also in the constituency. Guess where? Yes. Near Helensburgh, at Cardross. A natural hand-holder rather than a strategist, Mr Reid, now tethered by his Leader’s unequivocal opposition to Trident 2, will be severely tested on this one.
As we’ve said, the general election campaign in Argyll is going to be a cracker.
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June 20th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
The writer of this piece has a provocative turn of phrase. The imagination can dwell on that phrase ‘a natural hand holder’ and speculate.
June 20th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I would debate that he local economy is “heavily” dependent at all to the nuclear element of the base. The conventional aspects of the base is the major source of benefit to the local economy and this aspect of it would certainly be retained by an independent Scotland and arguably expanded with Scotland’s requirement for defence of its huge territorial waters including as they do vast oil installations and important fishing waters.
I see up to fifty new exploration licenses are presntly being sought for North Sea expansion in the oil extraction field.
I have little doubt that the berthing of a large fleet of nuclear powered submarines, at or approaching decommissioning date, as is presently proposed will provide virtually no extra employment opportunities but will have the certain effect of destroying property values around Helensburgh as the Holy Loch Base did in the Dunoon area.