The Myth:: Scrap Trident And Spend The £200bn Elsewhere

The Truth:: That cost is wrong, and it couldn't be done

The nats often claim that we should scrap the £200bn Trident program and spend that money on other things.

This is not possible.

The Cost

For a start, Trident is not costing £200bn. This is a figure that an anti-Trident group came up with using some extremely dishonest calculations.

To be a NATO member, we must commit to spending 2% of GDP on defence.

When our GDP was increasing during the pre-pandemic years, obviously, our defence spending would also increase.

The anti-Trident group transferred this increase in spending to an increase in costs. That is blatantly untrue.

An analogy on that would be like saying that if your wages go up, the price you pay for goods automatically go up by the same amount, the same day. Even the most economically challenged can see that would be a lie. Prices do change, but those increases are not directly tied in any way to wages.

The true cost of Trident is £70bn and that is spread across its design lifetime of 35 years. Source: UK Defence Journal

Scrap Trident and using the money elsewhere.

This is not possible.

Trident is not paid for with any new money. The cost is paid for out of the MOD budget. That budget is, as said above, fixed at 2% of GDP.

Scrapping Trident would not put a single penny back into general spending.

The money would still be MOD money.

Thats two lies busted in one article.