LONDON — Prime Minister Theresa May, in her first major parliamentary appearance since taking office last week, won a vote on Monday to authorize and update Britain’s nuclear arsenal, a move intended to underscore the nation’s commitment to remaining a global power despite its recent decision to leave the European Union.
The vote in Parliament on maintaining Britain’s nuclear missiles and the submarines that carry them also gave the new British leader a chance to highlight the deep divisions in the opposition Labour Party over the issue, and the relative unity of her own Conservative Party after months in which the Conservatives were deeply split over whether to leave the European Union.
But the issue also illustrated the deep strains afflicting Britain after the “Brexit” vote. The Scottish National Party, which dominates representation of Scotland, fiercely opposes the nuclear system as well as withdrawal from the European Union, and it has indicated that it might seek another referendum on Scottish independence, after a failed vote in 2014, if Britain goes through with its departure from the bloc. Britain’s nuclear submarines are based in Scotland, which complicates the question of how the nation could retain its capacity as a nuclear deterrent if Scotland were to leave the United Kingdom.
Making her first statement in the House of Commons since becoming prime minister, Ms. May told lawmakers that it would be an act of “gross irresponsibility” not to replace the nation’s aging fleet of nuclear-armed submarines at a time when threats were increasing. Lawmakers later supported renewal of the Trident nuclear program by a vote of 472 to 117.
Speaking before the debate, Michael Fallon, the defense secretary, acknowledged that Britain would have to try harder to reassure allies of its foreign policy commitment after British voters ignored calls from international leaders, including President Obama, to remain in the European Union.
“We are still around, and we have to demonstrate that leadership all over again,” Mr. Fallon told reporters, citing the weapons vote — alongside Britain’s military commitment to Afghanistan, the dispatching of 250 troops to help train forces in Iraq and additional deployments in Eastern Europe — as evidence that Britain was “stepping up, not stepping back.”
“We will do more in NATO to compensate,” Mr. Fallon added, naming the United States, France and Germany as countries with which Britain would seek to deepen defense cooperation.
Mr. Fallon, who will visit Washington this week, said that while the United States had not anticipated the referendum’s result and was disappointed, it appreciated that Britons were “pretty practical people” who could find their way around challenges. The Americans, he added, “know that this does not mean any kind of retreat from the world.”
In Parliament, Ms. May told lawmakers that she would be willing to order the use of the Trident system of submarine-based nuclear missiles if necessary, and she made a broad defense of the program’s renewal. “The nuclear threat has not gone away. If anything, it has increased,” she said, adding that it was impossible to predict that no extreme threats will emerge in the next 30 or 40 years, and that “it would be an act of gross irresponsibility to lose the ability to meet such threats by discarding the ultimate insurance against those risks in the future.”
Ms. May also promised to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic spending on defense, matching a NATO guideline that Mr. Obama has pressed the European allies to do more to meet.
The renewal of Britain’s continuous, at sea, nuclear deterrent, which includes four Vanguard-class submarines, comes with a price tag of 31 billion pounds (about $41 billion), with a further £10 billion ($13.2 billion) set aside as a contingency — something Mr. Fallon described as a “pretty good investment” for a nuclear deterrent with a life expectancy of around three decades. Lawmakers voted in 2007 to go ahead with a nuclear defense program that extends beyond the 2030s, and Monday’s vote was on proceeding with that program.
Most Conservative Party lawmakers support Trident, and enough deputies in the Labour Party were expected to vote in favor, or to abstain, for the measure to pass comfortably. However, Labour’s left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who has campaigned for decades for nuclear disarmament, opposes Trident and on Monday described it as “an indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction.”
At the last general election, Labour supported a manifesto that accepted the deterrent, and Mr. Corbyn has not sought to oblige fellow Labour lawmakers to side with him in opposing the renewal.
Nevertheless, the Trident issue highlights the continuing crisis over Mr. Corbyn’s leadership. He has refused to quit despite losing a no-confidence motion among his own lawmakers, the resignations of the majority of his team of senior aides in Parliament, and a looming leadership challenge.
Mr. Corbyn was elected overwhelmingly by his party’s members and supporters last year, and he is confident that he will be re-elected. Some observers believe that his re-election could lead to a split in the Labour Party.
Among the difficulties confronting Mr. Corbyn’s opponents are two lawmakers who say they intend to challenge him: Angela Eagle, a former spokeswoman on business, and Owen Smith, who spoke on welfare issues before resigning. That could split the vote against the party leader. Labour lawmakers agreed on Monday to unite behind one of the candidates.
Like many lawmakers on the left wing of the Labour Party, almost all Scottish lawmakers voted against the Trident program.
Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet is based at Faslane in Scotland, and the Scottish National Party, which has 54 of the 59 Scottish lawmakers in Parliament, intended to oppose the program’s renewal.
“The S.N.P. will be strong and united in voting against Trident — in line with the wishes of a clear majority of Scottish society,” said Angus Robertson, the party’s leader in Parliament. He argued that, with annual operational expenses taken into account, the cost of Trident ran to hundreds of billions of pounds.
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