Tuesday, March 06, 2007

A final word on Trident......did we shoot ourselves in the foot?

Its no secret that like almost half our delegates, I was deeply disappointed about the outcome of the Trident debate which leaves us with a policy position my conscience could not possibly allow me to defend. So I was interested in this comment I received in an email from a pal, a fellow member, who took a very different view from me on the issue:

"It looks like you would have been unhappy with the Trident Debate outcome. It was a clever compromise however. But I still think 'delay a decision' is bad politics and doesn't help us electorally. The press were full of stories over 'strong leadership', but in reality what we got was a rather grubby deal focused mainly on overcoming dissent in the party."

And therein for me lies the rub. The current position was a fudge when it was proposed and is still a fudge now it has been passed. And from the original debate at FPC it is clear that the proposers believed it was a compromise position which would overcome dissent. That sadly displays a lack of understanding of members and the motivation for those of us who take a different view. We may have lost this particular battle but we will continue to work for what we believe is right. The idea that our dissidence will be overcome by a policy that we find indefensible is naive. But, we are where we are, so I will shut up about it..........for now!

1 comment:

Rob Fenwick said...

The movers of the motion performed a very clever manouver when they realised that actually what conference wanted to vote for was disarmament now. As that option wasn't on the table, they realised that conference would vote for whichever option they believed was closest to it - hence their tactical positioning of the unamended motion as the 'true' disarmament motion, painting amendment two as soft on Trident, soft on the causes of Trident.

You've got to hand it to them, they know their game.