THE world is risking a new nuclear arms race – and Keir Starmer should give his “head a shake” rather than double-down on Trident, the co-leader of the Canadian Greens has said.
Speaking to The National after attending a UN summit on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), Canadian MP Elizabeth May said that the world was entering a period of “rethinking”.
She pointed especially to Donald Trump’s remaking of the US-Canada relationship – launching 25% tariffs on all Canadian goods and suggesting the country should become the “51st state”.
But May also highlighted the changing security landscape in Europe, where Russian aggression and US capitulation over Ukraine has led to a renewed interest in nuclear weapons in both the UK and France.
On Monday – the day the UN summit on a global nuclear weapons ban began – Starmer took the opposite position, telling the Commons that “if ever there was a time to reaffirm support for the nuclear deterrent, it is now”.
Asked about Starmer’s comments, May told The National: “Possessing nuclear weapons doesn't make the world safer. To Prime Minister Starmer, give your head a shake.
“Nuclear weapons never made the world safer. Mutually assured destruction as a strategy did not make the world safer, and the continued existence of nuclear weapons, nuclear stockpiles, makes the world less safe.
“The only step that we should be taking … on the threat, on the spectre of nuclear war, the only thing that makes us safer is collective will to eliminate and prohibit nuclear weapons.
“There's a very big risk of another renewed nuclear arms race.”
While European governments have leaned into nuclear weapons in recent months as tensions with Russia escalate – and Trump shows the US as a less reliable ally – delegates at the UN summit on the TPNW have said escalating tensions should instead be seen as underscoring the need for disarmament.
May told The National that the world is in a “moment of rethinking”, going on: “It's a very good moment to say, how many countries can get behind the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons?
“What would that call on us as state parties to do? How do we ensure a defence strategy that makes sense? And how do we eliminate the threat of nuclear war on this planet?
“There's only one way to eliminate the threat of nuclear war, and that is to dismantle nuclear arsenals and ensure they are not ever rebuilt.”
May was part of a delegation of parliamentarians from countries around the world to issue a statement from the UN summit on Tuesday.
They warned that the world is closer to disaster than any time since the Cold War, pointing specifically to threats of nuclear weapons being used in Ukraine and Gaza.
At the parliamentarian meeting, concerns were expressed about the failure of nuclear states – and those under their “umbrellas” – to attend the UN conference, as observers if not states parties.
Scottish Secretary Ian Murray said last month that he would push the UK Government to attend, a move which would live up to his pledge to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.
However, Murray performed a sharp U-turn on Wednesday and expressed support for the UK’s nuclear weapons being held in Scotland.
She further said there had been “deep concern that we're now hearing political –, I hate to use the word leaders when talking about Donald Trump or Benjamin Netanyahu, but we're actually hearing the leadership of certain countries speak of [using] nuclear weapons.
“That's not the kind of language we've heard for decades.”
The words echo Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, who said that the “era of nuclear reductions is now over”.
“The most important bottom line of what's happening right now is that the trends in all nuclear matters that we have gotten used to after the end of the Cold War are changing,” the nuclear expert told a press conference.
“When the Cold War ended, we had very dramatic changes, reductions, nuclear systems being scrapped left and right, weapons withdrawn from overseas positions, etc.
“But over the last seven to eight years that trend has ended. The era of nuclear reductions is now over.”
