Nick Clegg today became the first major party leader to call for the scrapping of Trident - Britain's submarine based nuclear missile system. He rightly identified the fact that such weaponry is outdated and no longer meets our defence needs; however it is a shame that Clegg did not go so far as to say that Britain should ditch its nuclear weapons altogether.

The LibDem leader simply said that Trident should not be replace 'like for like', implying that he favours some other, more cost effective nuclear weapons system. It's hard to tell exactly what this would be, Britain gave up it's airborne nuclear deterrent decades ago with the decommissioning of the Vulcan bomber and I can't see such a system being resurrected. Exactly what does Clegg suggest we replace Trident with?

However the arguments about the cost of the deterrent or the type of system used are largely irrelevant when you consider the moral implications of possessing such weapons in the first place. Weapons that are never going to be used, and are in fact utterly useless in terms of Britain's place in the world today and the threats it faces. Furthermore, our possession of nuclear weapons and our to determination to upgrade them totally undermines our position when attempting to lecture countries like Iran and North Korea about their own nuclear ambitions.

With the Conservatives promising a strategic defence review should they take office after the next election, it seems likely that even they will be forced to make difficult choices about Britain's defence expenditure and our nuclear deterrent. The fact that they have promised such a review after an election allows them to conveniently dodge pre-election questions on defence expenditure and shows that once again they are unable to commit to making tough decisions. With polls often showing real public support for nuclear disarmament, perhaps Labour is missing a trick here by not bringing this debate to the fore and creating a real dividing line between ourselves and the opposition.

This post can also be found on Labour List.

Before you read the rest of this post, consider this: Are there any circumstances whatsoever in which you would be prepared to have the deaths of hundreds of thousands people on your conscience?

No one can deny that right now the public finances are in a bad way: in order to pay back the debt incurred by the state over recent months taxes will have to be raised and public spending cut. So what better way to alleviate some of the pressure on the public purse than by ditching the plans to update the totally unnecessary Trident nuclear missile system?

The true cost of replacing the system, including maintenance costs of the new system spread over its 30 year life-span, is estimated at an eye-watering £76 billion. The fact that the cost is spread over 30 years is irrelevant as it’s likely we will still be paying for the recent government spending for at least half of that time.

The arguments in favour of updating Trident are largely based upon an outdated, Cold War view of geopolitics. It’s said that nuclear weapons are the reason the Cold War never escalated to an all out conflict - and maybe so. But the fact is we no longer live in the cold war era and the dizzying pace of globalisation has resulted in an economic interdependence between countries that make the chances of a full scale world war seem very remote indeed.

Another argument in favour of Trident is that without it, Britain would lose its standing in the world. Well, if our ‘standing in the world’ is based solely upon our ability to indiscriminately kill hundreds of thousands of people in one fell swoop then perhaps we don’t deserve such a standing. Such blind patriotism is frankly sickening. Britain’s standing in the world is not a result of its possession of nuclear weapons, it is a result of our long history of democracy, our commitment to human rights and a language and culture that has spread right around the globe.

The threats and problems we face today cannot be solved by nuclear weapons. We cannot fight terrorist cells or Somali pirates with weapons designed to take out entire cities. What’s more, polls have consistently shown that the British public do not support the replacement of Trident. What better time could there be to scrap such an unpopular and expensive public spending program and lead the way in the noble cause of global nuclear disarmament?

To return to the question posed at the beginning of this post, try to foresee a situation in which we would actually use our nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons used today are many times more powerful than those dropped on Japan in 1945. Millions of innocent people would die, and for the sake of what? Retaliation? An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth - a city for a city?

In the 21st century, one hopes that even the most eccentric world leaders have grown out of that mentality. I never want to see a situation in which the death of millions would be forever on the collective conscience of the British people - the only way we can ensure that such a situation never arises is by getting rid of Trident, now.