Kevan Jones Saves The Lib Dems

I would like to congratulate all those who thought that they were the daring Left because they supported Kevan Jones against the traditionalist Labour Leadership and its Independent allies on the old Derwentside District Council. Is a unilateral commitment before the BBC to a like-for-like replacement of Trident radical enough for them?

Pat Glass, who played no part in any of that, speaks well of him, and one does like to imagine her and Roberta Blackman-Woods ascending the train at Durham and alighting at King's Cross, or vice versa, with Kevan Jones walking behind carrying their bags. "Over there, Jones, and don't dawdle." Such has been pretty much his relationship with Nick Brown for decades. One trusts that his very youthful would-be successor in the fullness of time does not plan on becoming quite as acquainted with his, er, "seat" as did one of that youth's predecessors in the same ward. The fallout from that, when the falling out came, can sometimes still be felt to this day. But I digress.

No, another congratulation is in order. Congratulations to Kevan Jones on having saved the Lib Dems at the 2015 General Election. They were already on course to do well at next month's local elections, taking back Cornwall from No Overall Control, and taking both Devon and Somerset directly from the Conservatives. On that same night, Labour will replace the Conservatives in overall control of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and could even do so in Lancashire, which will otherwise move to NOC with Labour as the largest party. The Conservatives are going to lose anything up to a thousand seats. That's right. In the English County Council Elections.

On top of that, Kevan has just given the Lib Dems a unique selling point for 2015, as the only party even willing to consider the question of Trident. They are going to milk this one for everything that it is worth. And it is worth anything up to a hundred billion pounds, to be cashed in at the ballot box. There is going to be a Labour Government in 2015. But for what? What will be the point of it? The decision to put up Kevan rather than his nominal boss, Jim Murphy, suggests that the Purge of the Blairites will favour him. He looks to be on course to become Secretary of State for Defence. With any luck, Pat, and not Stephen Twigg, will become Secretary of State for Education, although I have no inside knowledge of that. But Kevan's rising star gives considerably less cause for delight.

Iran does not have nuclear weapons. As for North Korea, any weapons launched from there could not possibly reach the United Kingdom (could they from Iran, even if such things existed?), and, unlike the United States, we are under no treaty obligation to defend either South Korea or Japan. If the Japanese want anything at all from us, and it is not as if they need it, then they should be made to apologise and to pay compensation to the few of their British victims who remain alive.

Furthermore, never mind that no one in the Pakistani elite pays tax. We ought not to be paying overseas aid, the general principle of which I vigorously defend, to any country that can afford nuclear weapons. Be that country Pakistan, the only place on earth that might be even more unsuitable to have them than North Korea is. Be that country India, which is increasingly in the grip of Narendra Modi and worse. Be that country anywhere at all. If you have that kind of money lying about, then you manifestly do not need any of ours.

We ourselves do not have that kind of money lying about. Not really. It is just that we like to pretend that we still do. How many cuts to the Armed Forces and to their basic requisites, never mind to anything else, do there have to be in order to pay for this vanity project, which is in fact under the control of a foreign power? Whatever happened either to fiscal responsibility or to national sovereignty? Kevan Jones would seem to have abandoned those causes to, of all people, the Lib Dems.