Early in any new premiership, a new prime minister is asked to write "the last resort letters".
This is a set of instructions for the commanding officers of the Royal Navy's four Vanguard class ballistic missile carrying submarines, which are only to be opened in the event that the prime minister is wiped out in a nuclear attack.
"It's a very big moment," admitted Theresa May's predecessor, David Cameron, in an interview with me and my colleague Peter Hennessey.
"It's the oddest in a way. You've seen prime ministers drive up to Buckingham Palace. You've seen them walking through the door of No 10.
"You can't really believe you're doing it yourself, but that bit in your office, writing out the letters... it is such an extraordinary thing to have to do, you can't really imagine it until you do it."
On Monday, Mrs May will ask the House of Commons to approve a motion on the United Kingdom's independent nuclear deterrent and to support a "decision to take the necessary steps required to maintain the current posture by replacing the current Vanguard-class submarines with four successor submarines".
The debate will mark the culmination of a process that started in December 2006, when Tony Blair's cabinet met and agreed, without a single dissenting voice, to sustain the nuclear deterrent over the period 2020 to 2050 and beyond, by building four new submarines. That's the minimum number required to ensure one submarine is always at sea, providing what is known as continuous at sea deterrence.
The decision was endorsed by parliament in 2007, and in two Strategic Defence and Security Reviews (SDSR) in 2010 and 2015.
The scale, complexity and cost of the acquisition programme is vast. (end of excerpt)
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