Trident: no case for renewal

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 22nd Jun 2009

Lib Dem Leader, Nick Clegg, has called for a reassessment of the need for the Trident nuclear missile programme.

Lib Dem Leader, Nick Clegg, has called for a reassessment of the need for the Trident nuclear missile programme.

Liberal Democrat Leader, Nick Clegg MP, has become the first major party leader to say that a like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear missile programme is no longer necessary.

In a recent interview with the Guardian, Nick said: "New leadership in Russia, new leadership obviously in the White House and a wider geostrategic appreciation means that a cold war missile system designed to penetrate Soviet defences and land in Moscow and St Petersburg at any time, in any weather, from any location anywhere round the planet, is not our foremost security challenge now. We have got to be grown-up and honest about it."

In the current recession, Nick has suggested that the rapidly-deteriorating public finances represent a strong reason to reassess the need for Trident: "Given that we need to ask ourselves big questions about what our priorities are, we have arrived at the view that a like-for-like Trident replacement is not the right thing to do."