To think saying you would never push the button is moral cowardice?

[VeryEarlyDays]

If corbyn is anti nuclear and for disarmament then those are the colours he should nail his mast.
Today he seemed to say I will not oppose trident because that would loose votes so I'll let millions of pounds be spent on something but then say personal I wouldn't use it. Just seems cowardly..

The idea that Britain would be allowed by the US to shoot down a Russian plane is what's making me larf.

We could do it, but I imagine the President would be quite cross with us.

I guess the reason why Russian military planes are unlikely to head for London is because it would force the US to respond rather than Putin being scared of what a British Prime Minister would do.

I believe that's why Russia and the US are currently negotiating to make sure their planes don't accidentally hit each other in Syrian airspace and start WWIII.

The Russians don't need to send planes. They own most of London already.

The Russians don't need to send planes. They own most of London already

True. But some of them are the ones that Putin doesn't like.

You don't have to send a plane though.

Quite the opposite, OP. Moral cowardice is not standing up for one's beliefs when they are tested, surely? Mealy mouthed politicians who never answer questions directly and honestly are the norm, as Mr. Cameron so ably demonstrates at P.M.Q.s. Mr Corbyn has at least been direct and honest in this matter.

He was elected on a platform of grown-up politics, in which adults are able to disagree

Yep, he really demonstrated this when dealing with the "say Israel" heckler

'radioactive penis extensions totally pinching that one - very very apt.

There are two issues here: 1) whether Trident is right or not and 2) how Corbyn handles the deep disagreements within his party over this issue.

IMO Trident is unpleasant but it's an unpleasant world so I think Corbyn is wrong on 1). Others may disagree. But the fudge mentioned in the OP is more a symptom of 2). More deeply it's a symptom of the fact that while Corbyn has some support within the wider Labour Party, within the Parliamentary Labour Party he has very little - especially on this issue.

One after another, most of his Shadow Cabinet have said they'd resign if he explicitly came out against Trident. If Corbyn's whole Shadow Cabinet resigned, where would that leave him? He is, we are told, a principled man, and is unlikely to change his views just because his MPs disagree with him; but if the issue is forced it might cause the Opposition to collapse in undignified infighting between the Leader and the PLP. So Corbyn has fudged it, by saying he'd 'never press the button'.

So while you might say it's moral cowardice to fudge it like that, it's also a pragmatic attempt to preserve some shred of unity within a political party that by all accounts is in a state of civil war, so it can continue to do its job as Her Majesty's Opposition rather than collapsing into being a student union debating society. I don't think that's cowardice. It might not be ideologically pure, but very little in real politics is.

I thought one of the reasons to have Trident was to keep the Uk's seat on the UN Security Council.
For those in favour of our nuclear deterrent, would you be willing to order their use?
I'm against Trident and won't vote for a party which wants to keep and renew them. The nuclear convoys are an unnecessary target for terrorism.....there was an explosion in the Ross Priory woods near the village of Gartocharn in 2010, no one was arrested and wasn't really mentioned in the news after. Certainly wasn't pointed out in the media that the explosion was close to a road on a route the nuclear convoys use.