Trident’s £3m jobs are a costly defence of Britain’s fading status

3rd October, By Samuel Rafanell-Williams, Scottish CND

ALICE laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Prime Minister. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

In order to complete our new Dreadnought submarine programme, 65,000 jobs will be required by 2030. This number has been quoted by the Prime Minister in Parliament, so it must be
true. The current cost of the Dreadnought programme is newly estimated at £240 billion by UK CND.

Scottish CND’s estimate in our Reclaim Our Clyde
campaign two years ago was £200bn. So if we divide our more conservative
£200bn by 65,000 jobs, we get just over £3,000,000 per job. Let me spell
out that astonishing sum again: £3 million per job.

CND has some good ideas
on what we might use that money for, such as: 220,000 extra nurses; 3.7m
affordable homes; Tuition fees for 8m students; Install solar panels on
every home. My pick would be ending world hunger. How many enemies would we
have then?

There is little doubt that the world is becoming more dangerous.
A well-used anecdote over the past century is that “generals are always
fighting the last war”. While this may be true of Donald Trump’s illegal
assault on Iran, the Ukraine war is surely quite the opposite.

Ukraine is
changing warfare techniques every few weeks. They are fighting the next
war. The drone technologies they invent are cutting edge for a couple of
months, then become obsolete. The state-of-the art Chieftain Mk 3 tanks we
sent them are unused and irrelevant. Russia’s expensive nuclear bombers
were seriously exposed in the “Operation Spiderweb” drone attack by
Ukraine in June 2025. Who is to say the UK’s own nuclear facilities are not
equally vulnerable? Russia, America and China are major powers. We are not.

The only one of six Astute-class nuclear submarines that is currently
seaworthy is the one launched last month on its sea trials. The rest,
almost new, are docked and awaiting repairs. The former prime minister Tony
Blair notes in his memoirs that deciding to renew the Anglo-American
Trident submarine fleet at Faslane had nothing to do with defence, but was
to consolidate our position as a major power.

This was evidenced this week
by Chancellor John Healey (formerly head of the Ministry of Defence)
announcing that £6bn would be spent on building three floating docks at
Faslane, in order to accommodate more nuclear submarines. This is only part
of the £15bn set aside for further developments at Faslane as part of
Project Royal Oak.

For context, £6bn is five times what the Scottish
Government spends annually on housing. To put it another way, a chronic
housing crisis in Scotland and beyond, among other social harms that could
be remedied with the more than £200bn spent on Trident renewal, is simply a
price the British government is willing to pay to sustain its ability to
destroy the northern hemisphere.

The National 3rd Oct 2026,
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/26604113.tridents-3m-jobs-costly-defence-britains-fading-status/