PM Letters of Last Resort

Does anyone want to speculate on what various PMs would have ordered in their Trident Letters of Last Resort?

The letters are locked in a safe aboard the submarine and destroyed, unopened, every time a new prime minister comes into office.

It's not known exactly what they say.

"There are only so many options available," says Prof Seligmann

"Do nothing, launch a retaliatory strike, offer yourself to an ally like the USA or use your own judgement.

"Essentially, are you going to use the missiles or not?"

Tony Blair reportedly "turned white" when he was told he had to write the letters when he became PM.
/QUOTE]
 
I speculated in one TL of mine:

The Prime Minister tried to remember what instructions he had given.

****

The Captain of HMS Polaris read the instructions.

“Three pounds potatoes.
Three pounds carrots.
One pound stewing steak.
Toothpaste.
Toilet rolls.”

“What does it say, Sir?”

The Captain read the slip of paper again. “Number One, I think it tells me to use my own initiative.”

I think we can be fairly sure that if the Americans have a similar system, President Trump's instructions would be: "Missiles, you're fired."
 
I can remember reading somewhere that its thought the only PM to endorse retaliation was Callaghan. Even Thatcher didn't see the point in using nukes when they had failed to deter. Those are just rumours, though.
 
I can remember reading somewhere that its thought the only PM to endorse retaliation was Callaghan. Even Thatcher didn't see the point in using nukes when they had failed to deter. Those are just rumours, though.

I suppose it should be remembered that the Letters of Last Resort were intended for a more than ordinary failure of deterrence. They were meant to be read in the event of a successful decapitation strike that left HM Government incapable of giving orders to the SSBNs in the usual way. That's a less likely, and more horrible, scenario than an 'ordinary' nuclear war. I personally would have thought more PMs would choose retaliation, although "use your initiative" would be a more diplomatic option that a politician might be more inclined to choose. "Use your initiative", when you're addressing an SSBN commander in a post-nuclear world, is effectively equivalent to "retaliate" in my mind, however. That said, arguments can be made for or against any option, so it's interesting to hear even a rumor of what the letters might have contained.

Consider also that the UK has two target lists. There is (supposedly) a target list for the UK acting as a part of NATO, so as to avoid duplication of targets and so on, and there is a list for the UK acting alone. An SSBN commander would, if he read the Letter of Last Resort, have no idea what the US and France were doing. So would he use the NATO target list and risk attacking lesser targets such as airfields, or would he use the UK-only list to be sure Moscow and Leningrad are destroyed? (I am not sure about the technical ability of UK weapons to re-target in the missile tubes, though. Some early ballistic missiles had hard-wired, custom-built circuitry for targeting.)
 
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