Corbyn is right on Trident

Simon Jenkins is spot on on this:

Corbyn was right on Iraq. He was right on Syria. He is right on Islamic State. On the idiocy, waste and vacuous drivel that constitutes “the case for Trident”, he has been right. Fighting him on it just to make Labour seem macho makes no sense.

When the late defence chief Michael Carver famously asked of Trident, “What the bloody hell is it for?”, an informed guess was that roughly half his senior colleagues agreed, including most army generals. Former defence secretaries Des Browne(Labour) and Michael Portillo (Conservative) have come out against Trident. So have military experts from Hugh Beach to Patrick Cordingley. So has the formerly pro-nuclear defence pundit Michael Howard.

Trident’s defenders have been largely confined to naval and defence industry lobbyists and a few Conservative MPs. The late Michael Quinlan, for long the high priest of nuclear deterrence, scrupulously held that the case needed regular review. In his final Chatham House essay (and then book) in 2006, he doubted if the “highly unspecific strategic arguments” for a separate British deterrent would long justify its soaring cost.