This year marks the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which claimed over 200,000 lives. Today’s nuclear states possess weapons which are over a hundred times more powerful than these bombs. On Wednesday, I was honoured to host a powerful CND event in Parliament commemorating these horrors and making the urgent case for disarmament. 

The response to escalating conflict in the Middle East and Eastern Europe has been a renewed drive towards rearmament. As governments around the world scramble to increase the destructive capacities of their nuclear arsenals, we risk sleepwalking into catastrophe.