Bungdit Din

Because he's got principles and he's prepared to stand by them publicly rather than saying what he thinks will appeal to a certain proportion of the electorate?

Or does he realise that a great many voters are fully aware that if nuclear weapons ever have to be used, their deterrent effect will have been proven to be entirely useless, and it would be the human race's way of committing actual hara-kiri?

I don't think that nuclear weapons are any kind of deciding factor in elections, to be honest. People choose to cast their vote based on stuff like the economy, being able to afford a roof over their head and put food on the table, little things like that, not about the willingness of the Prime Minister to participate fully in the great global immolation.

And why are you so bothered about Corbyn stating his position publicly? Are you bothered about the fact that Cameron won't say what's in the content of his letter in the nuclear submarines? Because all PMs have to write that letter, and they all have a choice as to what their orders are, and they all keep it entirely to themselves - NOBODY else knows apart from them, and the letters are destroyed unopened when the PM leaves office.

mikewot

Perhaps so. In which case he is in the wrong job And of the electorate eligible to vote only 0.55% voted for JC.
Therein lies the rub! It's supposed to be a deterrent for which you need a poker face to persuade the enemy that if they turn one of our cities into glass (even that sh1thole London) then we will do it back, but twice as hard. To show your hand, even before going for election is IMHO pretty dumb.

See above.

shiva

We currently have nukes. We may not have them in the future. Far from end of mate. Unless I missed the part about their perpetual existence and guaranteed renewal when out of date

mikewot

Touche mon brave! But I get the impression (and I cannot give accurate facts as the great British public do not get polled on the subject) that a lot of us want to be able to hold the big stick up as a warning to any big bad bullies out there that if the screw with us we will do it back, only harder.

Bungdit Din

I'm trying to make sense of that statement and failing. You'll have to help me. 380,000 people were eligible to vote for Corbyn in the leadership election and 251,417 did. That's a bit more than 0.55%.

You can't be referring to the General Election because that would be an utterly pointless comparison to make.

Maybe in mikewot world nuclear retaliation is a major election issue. In the real world of the UK I don't believe it is.

I also don't believe that there's any likelihood of any enemy with strategic nuclear weapons trying to turn any UK cities into glass if Corbyn is ever elected or not. Or rather, if it's ever a likelihood, then the international situation will be so lethal that civilisation would be doomed anyway so there'd be nothing whatsoever to be gained by firing back other than some utterly futile sense of revenge.

mikewot

45,844,691 eligible voters in UK based on the total number of names in the United Kingdom appearing in Electoral Registers published on 1 December 2010 and based on a qualifying date of 15 October 2010.

LOL! Having served in HM Forces I am more aware than most of the general public of the effects of nuclear war (we practised for surviving the effects) and how servicemen feel about it. Again you, like others, miss the point. It is now and always was intended as a deterrent. The big stick you do not ever want to use but if those big bullies make you then by goodness you most certainly will. Is that too subtle?

But can you absolutely guarantee that with certainty? No you cannot and I personally (and I suspect many other Britons) are not willing to gamble on that risk. I want some aces up my sleeve and I do not want some halfwit saying that no no no I would never use them. DOH!!

Bungdit Din

Oh, so you were referring to the General Election rather than the Labour leadership election.

Can you explain why? Using your logic, I could point out that Cameron got 0.075% of the national vote. What relevance does it have?

But as I said, it's an utterly pointless comparison to make. It's a worthless metric. So what's your point? Only 1.5% of the electorate were eligible to vote for Corbyn in the last GE, just as only 1.7% were eligible to vote for Cameron - the UK uses a constituency system, you see, and you can only vote for candidates standing in the constituency in which you're registered to vote. Coincidentally, both of them won their constituencies with 60.2%.

You clearly think you're making some kind of incisive, meaningful point, though. So what is it? I'm agog.

You're ex-military and you want to be sure that everybody dies. I get it.

I remain unconvinced that it's a major election issue outside the tattooed *****wit fraternity.

Mark Steel covered it pretty well, I thought: There must be something wrong with Jeremy Corbyn if he doesn't want to cause a nuclear holocaust

BritInParis

Any discussion on whether Britain should or shouldn't hold nuclear weapons usually misses the point. Trident or its replacement, as a weapons system, is inherently flawed because if you're reached the point where you need to press the button you're already lost. See Threads for illustration.

Britain holds nuclear weapons, and IMO, should continue to hold nuclear weapons for the single reason that the post-war world security was built around the fact that we would. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons names the UK as one of the five nuclear states along with the United States, Russia, China and France. It's no coincidence that these are also the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. We are also one of the three nuclear powers in NATO which continues to give us serious clout at a time when our conventional forces are continually shrinking.

To unilaterally disarm ourselves, or effectively do so as Mr Corbyn has done by unequivocally ruling out the use of the nuclear option under any circumstances, then this places our position at the world's top table in serious jeopardy. India, for example, is the world's largest democracy with a population twenty times the size of our own and an economy three times larger. It also possesses nuclear weapons albeit outside the NPT. Other paranuclear states, such as Brazil, Japan and Germany, could easily build themselves nuclear weapons if the political situation permitted it. If we did not renew our nuclear deterrent then our position at the UN Security Council would be become untenable and our position to influence world events would be severely and irreparable diminished.

The only mainstream political party which wants the UK to unilaterally disarm is the SNP, a party whose main aim is to oversee the breakup of the Union and for Scotland to create some kind of North Atlantic social democratic idyll à la Norway et al. They have no interest in Scotland or the rest of the United Kingdom having any kind of influence on the world stage.

I suspect Mr Corbyn and his supporters are unfazed by this. Indeed, perhaps they would actively welcome it. However it is not the policy of the Labour Party or indeed the Conservatives or the Liberal Democrats. I appreciate that Mr Corbyn is a principled man and wants to remain true to the views he has held for his entire political career but he is still acting as if he is a backbench rebel rather than party leader. This cannot continue if he wishes to lead Labour into the 2020 General Election. If he cannot reconcile his personal convictions with the compromises his role now requires then I suspect his days as leader of the Labour Party are numbered.

mikewot

Yes, trying to put into perspective the percentage who voted for him.

You are agog? Have you consulted a doctor about it?
What a very curious viewpoint, you believe that all military personnel want everyone in the world dead? wow! What soldiers really want is no one shooting at them. I guess that the word 'deterrent' has fallen on a closed mind.
And there is the crucial word, 'cause'. Who in the world wants to 'cause' nuclear holocaust? No one I know, just the reverse.

mikewot

And there is the nub of my raising the thread. I believe it is too late, he has already publicly stated his position, too late to put the genie back in the bottle. He has, in one sentence, fatally undermined any confidence that HM Forces may have had in his ability as the leader of the country and exposed his soft underbelly to the likes of that not very nice Mr Putin who seems very determined in an expansionist policy.

BritInParis

There are currently several threads on BE regarding his potential run as leader. I think I gave him six months in one which was greeted by derision by some posters but Trident is a prime example of how quickly it can unravel. No-one can expect to disagree so strongly with his own Shadow Cabinet and ignore party policy in public and still remain as leader.

Defence is just the first area he has happened to openly strayed from the party line. Economic policy, particularly in regards to welfare reforms, is where he will really come a cropper. He can either compromised his own views and lose his core support or stay true which puts him on a direct collision course with the Parliamentary Labour Party.

It is really a matter of not if, but when, he will have to go.

mikewot

I only post in here, too frightened to post elsewhere on the bored as, although I am ex-military and therefore a lean, mean killing machine, I do not have a personal nuclear deterrent to stop people posting nasty replies and making me run to my mummy.

Bungdit Din

Can you explain why? Using your logic, I could point out that Cameron got 0.075% of the national vote, and he ended up as PM.

You won't find any MP from any party who got more than zero point zero something of the national vote. The MP who got the most votes of all at the last GE (Steve Rotheram, Labour, Liverpool Walton) only took 0.07% of the national vote.

But as I said, it's an utterly pointless comparison to make, for reasons that it appears I need to explain below. It's a completely meaningless, worthless metric.

So to reiterate, what's your point?

Only 1.5% of the electorate were eligible to vote for Corbyn in the last GE, just as only 1.7% were eligible to vote for Cameron - the UK uses a constituency system, you see, and you can only vote for candidates standing in the constituency in which you're registered to vote.

So in other words, even though there were 45,844,691 eligible voters in the last GE, only 68,777 of them were legally permitted to vote for Corbyn (it's illegal to vote in any other constituency than the one in which you are registered, it's called "electoral fraud"), and 60.2% of them did.

So what insightful, incisive, meaningful point do you think you're making? In my experience, when people make completely irrelevant points that have no bearing whatsoever on the discussion, it's because they don't really have a proper argument.

mikewot

I will try to make it simple. Could you, if you paid 3 quid, vote for CMD? No only his constituents could vote for him as an MP. Could you, if you paid 3 quid, vote for Comrade Corbyn to be leader of the labour party? Yes you could. Too subtle?

Bungdit Din

OK, so you've realised that if you were a paid-up member of the Labour Party, you could vote in the leadership election. Well done you.

Presumably you're not aware that the same thing happens in all the other parties? Including the leadership election in which Cameron became leader of the Tories? Cameron got 134,446 votes from Tory Party members. Corbyn got 251,417 from Labour Party members.

So once again, given that you don't seem to be questioning the validity of Cameron's claim to be leader of the Tory Party, what's your point? How is any of this relevant?