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Address in Reply to Her Majesty’s Most   Gracious Speech

My Lords, when Cato the Elder ended all his speeches ““Carthago delenda est””, he may have bored the Roman Senate into the ground—and I would not be surprised if their Back-Benchers did not learn to join in the chorus every time. But he established the rule that if you want something badly enough, you must risk being a bore. Eventually, he got what he wanted. So it will not surprise your Lordships if I start this speech with a bitter complaint that in the large ranks of new arrivals in your Lordships’ House, some of whom are most welcome, particularly my old colleagues from the Liberal Party, there is no nominee from my party, in spite of the increase in the Green vote, demonstrating that our already valid case for one has been reinforced, not least by our vote in Brighton Pavilion where we ran the Conservatives to a very narrow margin for second place, and considerable gains in local councils. Having got that off my chest, though like Cato I shall return to the matter until justice is satisfied, I turn to the gracious Speech, although more to what was hardly mentioned in it than to what was. We have hardly finished a war to get rid of non-existent weapons of mass destruction before we find ourselves reviewing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, of which we are in breach, as recently pointed out not   only by ““Bremner, Bird and Fortune””, as I imagine all your Lordships saw, but by that even more authoritative publication of Chatham House, The World Today, which I am sure all your Lordships read. The latter, and the former, have pointed out that the British nuclear deterrent relies on US missiles and warhead components and that therefore the two countries are in breach of Article 1, which clearly states that,"““each nuclear-weapon State party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer . . .  nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices . . .  or control over such weapons or explosive devices, directlyor indirectly””." Apart from anything else, that breach means that we are constrained into a far closer relationship with the present sole superpower than any nation ought to be. And what is it all for? I hope that there is no one in your Lordships’ House who would ever contemplate the use of such a weapon under any circumstances whatever. As for the argument that the threat is enough and a weapon in itself, not only is such a threat totally immoral but it becomes over time more and more incredible. If the Prime Minister wanted to seal his name on history, he could do so best by starting to lead the countries who have or threaten to have weapons of mass destruction out of this immoral, vicious, threatening quagmire. If anyone wants to see the possible results of that quagmire, they should look at page 2 of the New York Times supplement of the Daily Telegraph today. It would not be easy to lead the way out of that quagmire, but it would be great statesmanship. So thinks the Green Party, and so think I.