Blair calls for new nuclear sub fleet

"The risk of giving up something that has been one of the mainstays of our security since the [Second World] War, and moreover doing so when the one certain thing about our world today is its uncertainty, is not a risk I feel we can responsibly take. Our independent nuclear deterrent is the ultimate insurance," Blair told an occasionally skeptical Parliament, which will vote on the program in March.


"Proliferation remains a real problem," he said. "The notion of unstable, usually deeply repressive and anti-democratic states, in some cases profoundly inimical to our way of life, having a nuclear capability, is a distinct and novel reason for Britain not to give up its capacity to deter."

LA times