Does David Miliband support Trident?

The New Statesman has been circulating an interview given by David Miliband last September. Their purpose was to highlight his comments about the Lebanese war:

Over the summer, as Israeli forces swept north across the border into Lebanon, even the most loyal ministers could not take it any more. One of them was David Miliband, a former policy chief at Downing Street and everyone's next-leader-but-one.

Miliband, who had just been promoted to Environment Secretary, was reported as telling a cabinet meeting at the end of July: "Where is this all going to end?"

Until this past week, Miliband has refused to elaborate, for fear of undermining further a leader who has treated him well. But this has not been one of those ordinary weeks in politics. Many MPs saw Blair's refusal to call for a ceasefire in Lebanon in the first weeks of the conflict as the last straw. So how did Miliband feel about it?

"I don't think anyone was relaxed about the situation," he says. He does not deny making the remarks to cabinet. "I felt very worried because, put it this way, I don't think that Israel is safer and stronger now than it was two months ago. I don't think the prospects of a secure and just two-state settlement in the Middle East are closer than they were two months ago."

But almost as interesting was his response on Trident:

I fought [the election], like every Labour MP, on the manifesto. You can't pick and choose which bits of the manifesto you don't like and which bits you like.

This is something you say about a decision you don't agree with. If he agreed with it, he would have explained why.

Comments

[Anthony C]

Interesting. I had been struck earlier - and am slightly surprised that it doesn't seem to have struck a lot of other people - that it was slighlty odd for him to offer Shirley Williams a non-ministerial job covering nuclear proliferation when she is known to be a fairly noisy opponent of replacing Trident.

[ian payne]

I don't care if he supports TRIDENT, I do care if he supports the Iraq debacle !!!!!