New poll shows public opinion split on Trident

A new survey of public opinion on Trident has found that 51% of the public are in favour of fully renewing it, but that 49% either support Corbyn's hypothetical compromise plan with the unions ("no-nuke subs" or full disarmament.

This suggests that public opinion isn't as clear-cut as the media are making it out to be, and it's also worth noting that if Corbyn did adopt the compromise position, it is unlikely to damage is standing amongst unilateral disarmers: the 'left-wing' disarmers will still vote for him and the 'right-wing' disarmers wouldn't have voted for him anyway.

Channel 4 fact-check also says: "Over the long term, there is some evidence of public opinion shifting away from replacing Trident with a like-for-like system, especially if people are told about the likely cost."

So, there's still room for manoeuvre for Jeremy Corbyn on this issue.

To be fair, I bet Corbyn touches himself at night at the thought of thousands of British troops without weapons running into Kalashnikov gunfire from an Islamist/Soviet Red Army/IRA tag team.

To be fair, I bet Corbyn touches himself at night at the thought of thousands of British troops without weapons running into Kalashnikov gunfire from an Islamist/Soviet Red Army/IRA tag team.

The first duty of a Government is the safety of its people. Simple as that. If the people aren't safe there's not much point in them then trying to fix the social ills.

Insurance always has to be at a realistic price for the risk. Your house might get wiped out by an asteroid and a policy costing 10p that guaranteed protection for 30 years and given that it is a very, very remote risk, that might be a good deal. If the quote was 500 quid, you would hesitate.

The current risk of an all out nuclear retaliation being needed appears slight, so on a simple risk analysis, paying 50bn plus to insure that seems steep. I won't repeat the 30 years bit, as there is a high chance that the purchased system will become obsolete well before then.

The proposed insurance is also very strange, as it is a most unusual type of insurance that actually by purchasing, somewhat increases the risk of the insured incident taking place. We know enough about national nuclear defence systems to suspect that they are accident prone and there is enough history of the cold war to show that nuclear stand offs are highly prone to human misunderstandings and bad decisions. Then there is the huge annual cost of trying to keep up with the suspected enemy systems and of course they are simultaneously engaged in similar struggles.

Then we have the fact that our alleged best friends, the US, have already fully insured us against this remote possibility, albeit, we have no guarantee they will always be our friends, although if we are nervous about that, it's quite hard to understand then why the policy relies totally on them supplying the technology either way.

Finally, all this is happening against a background where the national finances are so dire that the NHS is about to sack thousands of nurses, we cannot afford social care for the elderly and sick and we have cut the conventional military to the bone.

A rational person might conclude that these facts indicate that there must be a narrow clique of self interested people, like weapons manufacturers, who have succeeded in controlling and manipulating politicians and civil servants to push for this, because it makes no sense at all that we are doing it, unless something like that is happening.

When you read back into the history, the decisions about our nuclear weapons were generally taken in secret and the public were told many lies. Looks like the latter is still going on.

So we raise taxes 😊

A simple start would be to introduce the digital turnover tax currently proposed by dangerous lefty Nigel Lawson.

Then we can move on to posh properties in London.

Actually, we could just follow Corbyn's line of thinking and print the money to pay for Trident, not to mention the money needed to pay for the new engines on the destroyers thanks to Buff Hoon's silly decision.

What's the point of 'protecting' people with nuclear weapons if they are currently vulnerable and don't have a decent standard of living?? Fixing social problems is a type of protection, surely?

Government voted for £100bn renewal so make that more like 30% of annual income. Still worth it?

x

Are you a Corbynite?

....or do you just talk rubbish to troll?

You could work for RT.

Are they still building the aircraft carrier that won't have any aircraft?