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Just prior to retiring, the UK's former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron arranged for a parliamentary vote on whether the Trident nuclear-armed submarine programme should be renewed.
Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn is opposed to nuclear weapons, having said "I do not believe the threat of mass murder is a legitimate way to go about international relations." However, some Labour MPs support Trident; Corbyn has made this a free vote.
The submarines operate out of a base at Faslane in Scotland. All the MPs belonging to the Scottish National Party, which advocates Scottish independence, are opposed to Trident. One asked the prime minister: "Is she personally prepared to authorise a nuclear strike that can kill a hundred thousand innocent men, women and children?” and her answer was:
Yes. And I have to say to the honourable gentleman the whole point of a deterrent is that our enemies need to know that we would be prepared to use it, unlike some suggestions that we could have a deterrent but not actually be willing to use it, which seem to come from the Labour party frontbench.
One Conservative MP who is opposed to Trident criticised his own party when he said "This is a political weapon aimed rather effectively at the Labour party."
The Guardian has a page with updates on the vote. It has the text of the motion and lists the number of parliamentary seats held by each party (links added by submitter):
The motion passed by 472 votes to 117. It seems likely that it had the support of nearly all Conservative MPs and a sizable fraction of Labour.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Tuesday July 26 2016, @04:41PM
Slow slide into insignificance? Hell, no! We'll do it the British way with a stiff upper lip and grasp that greasy pole descending into insignificance with both hands! We'll even grease our hands first to slide down it quicker to show just how forthright and brave we are!
Trident is a colossally wasteful pile of bollocks that needs to be consigned to history. It's a weapon of retaliatory last resort, i.e. the rest of the proles would be dead before the serving prime minister is in a position to press the button. The vote on Trident wasn't required yet and as such it's more a vote to continue thinking about voting; the entire exercise was supposed to exploit divisions in the Labour party, but they're so divided anyway and intent on shooting themselves in all available limbs that it caused barely a ripple. No-one in power gives a shit about Trident. Various groups of arseholes give reasons why it's important (e.g. Britain still counts for something, job losses at the firms that will build Trident v2, etc) but ultimately, no-one with any power has any vested interest in this shite apart from them being given some sort of inducement to vote yes.
Spend the money on the armed forces, the NHS and building new houses. We do not need four floating white elephants to show how awesome we are.