Trident: what’s the Liberal Democrat alternative?

Scrapping the Government’s plans for a “like for like” replacement for Trident is one of the most frequently mentioned examples of savings Vince Cable and the Liberal Democrats would make.

But what would the party do instead on a topic that has been much debated at party conferences.

Nick Clegg addressed that in his Radio 4 interview yesterday:

What we’re saying is there are a number of options that you could explore in the future… you could equip the Astute submarine. What we’ve done is, I asked Menzies Campbell to look at the range of options and he’s published a number of options simply to make the point which the other parties won’t even accept that there are alternatives to a like-for-like replacement for Trident.

“We haven’t yet settled on which of those options. What we’re doing is something the government are refusing to do, and the Conservatives refuse to do – they wont even include it in a future defence review. Whether we have a nuclear deterrent or not depends heavily on whether multi-lateral nuclear disarmament in the non-proliferation talks succeed or not I am a multilateralist.

Hat-tip: Left Foot Forward