There has long been a tendency in parts of the establishment to belittle Britain’s nuclear deterrent — one of only two in Europe, along with France — as an example of our pathetic jingoism.
The embarrassing failure of a missile test off the coast of Florida last month, revealed yesterday by The Sun, will fuel more such talk along the following lines: what’s the point of having these weapons when they don’t work? Haven’t we needed America’s permission since the 1960s to launch them? We can’t afford them, and who’s going to attack Britain anyway?
That is the wrong way to think about it. The boat from which the test was fired is old — it was launched in 1992 as one of four submarines
