FOLLOWING this week’s failure by the Liberal Democrats to adopt an unambiguous anti-Trident policy, Labour will get the chance next week to start changing the political weather — by abandoning its unthinking addiction to the so-called nuclear deterrent.

The party’s association with these terrible weapons goes back more than half a century. It was of course the Clement Attlee government that began secretly developing them.

Even then the decision was all about the supposed prestige associated with such an indiscriminately destructive arsenal, rather than any assessment of how useful it was.