On the day when Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary went on radio to say we can’t rebuild our public services if we don’t have nuclear weapons, David Mackenzie makes the case for peace, and sanity.
There is only a single target for nuclear weapons – humanity itself.
Existential threats are threats to the future of the human race and nuclear war is right up there with climate and bio-diversity collapse. These twin horrors should be high on the election agenda. There is talk about “managing” the risks of nuclear war, but that is a very dodgy word in its implication of a process in some kind of rational control. Moving the petrol can a little bit further away from the open fire is not managing the risk, it’s at best a temporary emergency step that might give us a breathing space. Getting rid of nuclear weapons is ultimately the only rational response to the risk they pose.
This is why all candidates in this election should be asked whether they will, if elected, sign the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge in support of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.