Roy Hattersley, The Guardian

The nuclear deterrent changed my life. In the early 60s - having been rejected by a dozen safe Labour constituencies - I decided that London and parliament were not for me. I would remain in the north, administer my small part of the health service, and guide the housing department of Sheffield city council. Then Hugh Gaitskill promised to "fight and fight again to save the party we love". Suddenly, all I wanted was to be a foot soldier in the battle against the forces of unreason demanding unilateral nuclear disarmament. So I set off again on the long and winding road that led to the Sparkbrook division of Birmingham.

For several months before my epiphany, I had grown increasingly irritated by the irrationality of the unilateralist argument. Hard though it now is to believe, intelligent people failed to recognise that what they called "the balance of terror" kept Europe at peace. The idea that possessing a nuclear weapon prevented attacks by weapons of any sort never seemed to pass through their minds. And the notion that we had to be prepared to press the button to make sure the button was never pressed was too subtle for people who thought that shouting "Ban the bomb" contributed to serious debate.

It would be interesting to know how many old CND campaigners still believe that we were "sleepwalking to Armageddon", and that a nuclear holocaust might have been brought about by a US general who had gone off his head, or a Russian pilot who misinterpreted his coded instructions and obliterated Hamburg instead of returning to base. The old unilateralist argument has been proved so conclusively wrong that those of us who battled for collective security - including the constant upgrading of nuclear weapons to keep essential parity - have been totally vindicated.

I do not make the point in order to infuriate the men and women who still suffer from Aldermaston corns, but to establish that I was once the fiercest of what they called "nuclear warriors". And, although I have no doubt that what I once thought about nuclear weapons was right, I am equally certain that what the government proposes to do about them now is wrong. Spending £21bn on Trident's replacement is absurd. Circumstances have changed. The "threat", as we cold warriors once described it, is no longer a superpower that can be deterred by the certainty of nuclear retaliation. The new enemy is, we are told, a "rogue state". To such nations the complicated game of strategic balance means nothing. Old Trident was meant to prevent a war. New Trident will be used, if at all, only to win one.

We must also presume that new Trident is being bought so that we are capable of winning a war in which America does not take part. I have always believed that the idea of a British "independent" nuclear deterrent was absurd. Even in the bad old days of Soviet aggression against Hungary and Czechoslovakia there was never a strategic reason for insisting that we must - with help from the Pentagon - be able to blow a small hole in Russia some time after the US had blown a large one. The determination to possess our own nuclear capability now makes even less sense. If an al-Qaida operative who lives in Baluchistan spreads anthrax over half of London, we are not going to obliterate Islamabad.

So why are we spending so much money on so pointless an exercise? Sadly, we know the answer. Britain has been making the same mistake since Clement Attlee - the greatest prime minister of the 20th century - briefly abandoned the rule of rational thought that typified his years in Downing Street. He justified the original decision to possess an "independent" deterrent by insisting that "for a power of our size and with our responsibilities, to turn our back on the bomb makes no sense". To posture as a superpower, we had to possess a superpower's accoutrements.

When the future of Trident is debated in the House of Commons, opponents of its renewal will be caricatured as starry-eyed pacifists who are unwilling to face the hard realities of the modern world. That will be standing truth on its head. Abandoning Britain's independent nuclear role would be the rational decision. These days it is the nuclear warriors whose policy is built on a sentimental view of Britain's place in the world; £21bn is a high price to pay for a boost to the national ego.

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