Trident Renewal

It's the new political football folks. Here's how you play the game.

1. Make a scramble for the moral high ground. YOU would never retaliate even if the UK were under attack because people would be killed.
2. Dream of a world where there are no weapons at all. You can make John Lennon sound like a hard-nosed realist as you do so.
3. Trumpet how much you more would spend on hospitals or your own particular good cause instead of buying Trident. It doesn't matter particularly what good cause it is as long as it's a very good one.
4. Despise loudly anyone supporting Trident renewal as bloodthirsty fiends longing to kill lots of people.
5. Feel smugly superior.

Buying Trident is insane but it is an insanity we must stomach to live in the real world.

We are about to spend billions on a weapon we hope we will never use.

And why are we doing this? Because in a survival endgame Putin could not defeat the UK by simply THREATENING to use his nuclear weapons against us. If the UK possessed no nuclear weapons with which to retaliate against Russia then all Putin needs to do to win is threaten. No more than that.

I am guessing that deep amongst the throng of all the outraged, shocked, indignant and righteously moral, if misguided, people baying against Trident there is one person who is only disappointed but alas just his disappointment is more important, sadly, than all the angst of all the anti-Trident people combined.

His name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and I wish the world were not as it is.