Jeremy Corbyn has signalled he would scrap the UK’s nuclear weapon as soon as possible and thinks he’ll be Prime Minister by Christmas - at least that’s what Glastonbury Festival founder Michael Eavis said the Labour leader told him.
The festival legend let slip details of his conversation with the Islington North MP after his rapturously received appearance on Saturday.
Corbyn’s comments on taking residency in Number 10 reflect his new-found post-election confidence, and recent polls that put Labour ahead of the Tories, against hopes of another election if the minority Tory government blunders.
But his remarks on the Trident nuclear deterrent suggest the party leader taking a different position than his party, which stated in its manifesto it would renew the weapons system.
The Labour Party said the Somerset farmer-turned-festival organisers was “paraphrasing” the conversation.
According to a Somerset Live report on an Eavis Q&A session at the festival, Eavis asked Corbyn: “When are you going to get rid of Trident? He said: ‘As soon as I can’.”
Eavis told the audience: “Wasn’t (Corbyn) fantastic? I said to him, ’When are you going to be prime minister? He said: ‘In six months’.”
The party said: “Both Jeremy and the Labour party have long been committed to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which aims to achieve a nuclear-free world. Trident renewal is Labour policy, as spelled out in our manifesto, which Jeremy and the party were proud to stand on in the election.”
Corbyn has long been a supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and has consistently voted against renewing Trident.
Before the election, he said that Trident would be renewed by Labour and then placed into a strategic defence review to look at new, long-term threats such as cyber warfare.
In a keynote speech on defence and security at the Chatham House think tank, Corbyn also signalled he can’t envisage ever using nuclear weapons because to do so would mean the world had already suffered a “cataclysmic failure”.