Firstly, my apologies for the shorter newsletter this week, as I have been unwell (and well on the way to recovery now).
But this week’s message from Scottish CND is short and simple: we are being fleeced!
You have likely heard lots in the news this week about how impoverished the British military is, how they are in need of megabillions more cash (despite already having the 6th largest military budget in the world), and about the ever-present Russian threat.
But you will likely NOT have heard very much in the news about the new figures published by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which show that UK spending on nuclear weapons has increased by 17% between 2024-2025. This succeeds an increase of 26% between 2023-2024.
The UK now spends more on nuclear weapons annually than Russia, (the former Cold War superpower in possession of over 40% of the world’s nuclear arsenal). The UK is the third highest spender on nuclear weapons in the world (second in per-capita terms), spending nearly as much as China in real terms, and country with 20x our population.
MEANWHILE, the Royal Navy’s 5 nuclear-power submarines are all berthed awaiting maintenance, and unable to be deployed at sea. A worthwhile spend of over £12bn?
And further, only last week the Public Accounts Committee has described as “completely unacceptable” the mis-classification of over £6bn worth of assets by the MoD, caused by the misclassification of historic spending by…the Atomic Weapons Establishment!
That same committee is now calling for new transparency mechanisms with which to review spending on nuclear weapons in the UK. This is because existing published information is too opaque to scrutinise and challenge.
All this before the UK’s commitments to build submarines for Australia kick in, something which the Australian public and even political elites are increasingly realising is a ludicrous proposal.
Meanwhile former military bosses (many of whom now work in the defence industries) continue to promote enormous increases in military spending, with barely-veiled implications that cuts need to be made to public provisions in order to fund this.
And the British media, shockingly, soaks it all up with barely any criticism!
All this is to say that ON TOP of contributing to a dangerous nuclear arms race, undermining the UK’s treaty commitments and fuelling global tensions, nuclear weapons spending in the UK has clearly become black hole and an increasingly egregious misallocation of public resources.
Its time to recognise that we are already being ripped off by a fiscally out-of-control, and dangerous, programme of nuclear militarism.
Addressing the country’s real security needs means rejecting nuclear weapons!