Trident

I remember Nick Clegg telling Chris Huhne that without Trident we would be out of the Premier league ,and no-one would listen to us ." I have talked to these people I know" he said
Clearly in the interim he has decided that a second flight nation is what we are and he may well be right . As a Liberal he probably cares little and looks forward to the day when our foreign Policy is run from Brussels anyway. David Milliband recently informed the New Statesman that was already the case .
Iran makes the unpleasantly telling point that North Korea is treated quite differently because it has a nuclear capability and I doubt Clegg has changed his views on what is a statement of the bleedin’ obvious less bombs =less respek . Huhne only dissented from to appeal to his ex CND mung-bean munching constituency. So why does he now say we should drop Trident ?
Partly it is a recognition of fiscal reality and the dubious strategic imperative to retain cold war weaponry. Partly because the suicide note Manifesto in which Michael Foot promised surrender to the Soviet Union has faded sufficiently to allow a little freedom . Mostly he picks on this spending cut to make it difficult for the Conservative Party to do the heavy lifting without having populist identification of Trident ( a drop in the ocean) with stuffy war mongering thrown at them . You keep Trident but take our skoolz asnd ospitals sort of thing . Actually if we are cutting defence spending overall then we have to cut commitments which Nick`s do gooding internationalists will not like . Meanwhile he is oddly silent on cutting Public Sector pay , well not so oddly ewhen you remeber the Lib Dems are the most Public Sector supported Party and by the least useful on the biggest pensions .
Overall I think Trident should go but Clegg is not being honest about why he has performed a flip flop[.For him this is not hard choice its an easy choice , and a deviously political rabbit punch as well. Nonetheless I fear he is right and we are indeed heading for the Blue square Conference division thanks to New Labour