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If we must keep the nuclear option, there is a better and cheaper alternative to Trident

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Policy announcements, counter-proposals, rows and distractions: the pattern of election campaigns since time immemorial.

So it has been in recent days also.

First, the Conservatives “considered” reducing child benefit for all – to the strange delight of parents reading the Daily Mail who bemoaned “bribes to breeders”.

Then Labour quickly wrong-footed their rivals’ bold new plans to be heartless by pledging to scrap the unfair non-dom tax status as a point of principle.

After this the Tories triggered a row by claiming it could actually lose Britain money – not least because Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls himself had recently suggested it might.

Today, we’re on to the distraction: Trident.

In yet another personal attack on the Labour leader, Conservative Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said that Ed Miliband would “barter away our nuclear deterrent” and bow to the SNP’s demand for its removal from Scotland in order to win power.

Of course it was a smear. Labour, who hotly denied the claim, have already committed to both replacing Britain’s ageing fleet of Vanguard class submarines that carry Trident nuclear missiles and maintaining the continuous at-sea deterrent.

But, while this is undoubtedly a distraction from other, more pressing issues at this election, there is still a debate to be had about nuclear weapons on our shores.

Now, I’m no fan of nukes. I wish we didn’t have them in the first place. But, since we do, I can’t quite bring myself to wholeheartedly support getting rid of them.

Yet I cannot understand why the main argument is only ever framed as Trident renewal versus unilateral disarmament.

Surely there has to be a third way, a cheaper nuclear alternative to spending £33billion on replacing the same mass killing machine built during the Cold War.

As it turns out, there is. It also happens to be better than Trident, a system largely designed to attack Russia.

If we armed F-35 Joint Strike Fighters with nuclear missiles and operated them from both land bases and the Royal Navy’s new carriers, it could rid Scotland of nukes, make the weapons more mobile (perhaps occasionally circling the Gulf and not just the North Atlantic) and cost up to £13billion less than Trident.

This well-thought proposal by the CentreForum think tank argues that instead of the Clyde, the weapons should be based in existing facilities at RAF Marham, Norfolk and RAF Honington, Suffolk.

This would both check SNP pressure and mean, in the event of Scotland becoming independent (an increasingly real possibility), that we are not left having to expensively dismantle the current Trident base at Faslane, which remains the only real option for nuclear submarines in the British isles.

If defence – rather than blindly following the defence establishment as we usually do - really is a priority, Trident is probably the most stupid boondoggle imaginable.

Asides from the risk of basing it in a place that doesn’t want it and may not even remain part of the UK in the future, it is a needlessly rigid system.

I had to laugh when Mr Fallon told BBC Radio 4 today that, because we hadn’t predicted the rise of ISIS, it was worth keeping Trident because we don’t know what kind of threat we may face in the future.

Aside from the fact that the jihadists are not armed with nukes, that is a fair point.

But how does maintaining an outdated nuclear system that was built for Cold War use and was designed to strike Minsk more than the Middle East make us able to respond to an array of future global threats?

A new air-based system would be infinitely more flexible in the event of needing to strike anywhere in the world.

Also, in the unlikely but possible event of an international climate arising that would allow multilateral nuclear disarmament, the F-35s could continue to serve as conventional aircraft, while four nuclear submarines would be rendered fairly useless.

Beyond that, the estimated cost of the alternative dual-use platform would be between £20billion and £28billion, so the potential savings are huge.

They could be passed on to conventional forces, which – unlike nuclear weapons – might have some effect in tackling global terrorism.

Opponents of Trident have warned that investment in it could mean having to cut the Army to just 60,000 men and women in order to meet the current defence budget.

This would mean that Britain would be unable to meaningfully contribute to the international missions we have hitherto so willingly played a part in.

So, this is the choice: you either stick with an outdated ball and chain, or consider a flexible, cheaper and better defence system that might actually be useful.