#CancelLizTruss, lobby for the abolition of nuclear weapons

While the world was focused on the unfolding crisis at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine last week, Liz Truss, frontrunner for the post of UK Prime Minister after the resignation of Boris Johnson, affirmed her willingness to use Britain’s nuclear arsenal even if doing so risked ‘global annihilation’. She is not alone in willing to sacrifice humanity for her country’s right to unleash nuclear catastrophe. The preparedness to commit mass murder is, macabrely, part of the job description of every leader of every country that possesses nuclear weapons and has been for the past 70 odd years. Her statement is only newsworthy because she has been so forthright about using nuclear weapons. Coming at a time when Russian nuclear forces are on high alert amidst tensions with the West over its war in Ukraine and Israeli sabre rattling over Iran’s nuclear programme is growing into a din, her honesty is likely to make the world, including the British people she aspires to lead, a far more dangerous place.

Spare a thought here for them and the populations of all these ‘advanced’ countries who will have to live under callous leaders whose genocidal views and disregard for human life would horrify ordinary, decent human beings and no doubt get them cancelled in today’s world of ‘cancel culture’. There is a way we could protect them and defuse global tensions. We could do so by working towards a nuclear-free world. A good place to start would be by supporting campaigns aimed at nuclear disarmament through, for example, petitioning nuclear-armed governments to abide by the commitment to reduce their nuclear arsenals which they made under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons with the aim of eventually getting all governments to sign on to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Anything less would dishonour the memory of the victims of the atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the 77th anniversary of which we commemorated earlier this month. Crucially, our silence would not only signal uncritical acceptance of the pious-sounding but essentially empty statements about their countries’ commitment to world peace which leaders of the ‘civilised world’, incumbents and candidates alike, released on this occasion but also absolve them of any culpability in unleashing nuclear holocaust upon us all in future.

N.B. Rishi Sunak, Ms Truss’ main challenger for the post of Prime Minister, was not consulted in the writing of this piece. Nor did he make any financial contributions thereto.