TRIDENT NUCLEAR DETERRENT

The Commons has voted today to upgrade our nuclear weapons and submarines at vast expense to counter some as yet unforeseen threat some time in the future. This at a time when we are threatening Iran with sanctions because they are suspected of having a program to develop a nuclear weapon. At the present time the big four nuclear powers have about 1400 nuclear warheads, each one of them more powerful than the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Second World War. Even if you accept the these weapons of mass destruction serve a useful purpose, why do we need so many of them?
It is not generally known that in signing the 1968 Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty Britain declared its intention to "Achieve at the earliest possible date the cessation of the nuclear arms race, and to undertake effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament. In addition, the Labour government stated in July 1998 its goal was the global elimination of nuclear weapons. (Strategic Defence Review) The government may pay lip service to this but have you heard about any serious initiatives in this direction since Labour came to power; I certainly haven't. In all the debate in the last few weeks leading up the the Commons vote I have only heard the words Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament mentioned once. Why don't we make strong efforts in this direction first, before we think about upgrading Trident? Is it because Blair thinks his buddy George Bush would just laugh at him? At least if we had a bloody good try, we would have the moral high ground, sadly something we don't have at present.