As I hinted at yesterday, there was not much to choose in policy terms between Nick and Chris, they even used the same words on occasions. This therefore means that the only issue, touched on by Chris but not Nick, was Trident.
Chris, expectedly, got huge support in the hall when he spoke of his position on Trident. The truth is that the grassroots of the party are against our policy position. Had the parliamentarians and PPC's not been whipped last year I believe the motion would have been lost. I am of course delighted that Chris has taken this position, but I am a tad suspicious. For those of us who are against Trident this is an issue we are passionate about. If Chris shares that passion where was he in the Harrogate debate........on the platform speaking against?.........er no. In the conference hall voting against?...........er no. In the shadow cabinet speaking out against a crap policy?...........er no. So my question for Chris is this......what has changed over the last 18 months to make you either come out of the closet or change your mind? If you had taken a principled stance, resigned from the front bench and spoken against the motion you would have shown real leadership and I am convinced you would have swung the vote. Why didn't you? I am genuinely interested in the answer, without a sound one I may be tempted to suspect this decision has more to do with another example of Huhne opportunism and far less to do with a man of serious convictions.
4 comments:
Well, he spoke out against replacing Trident in the 2006 leadership election: http://www.theliberati.net/quaequamblog/2006/02/08/lib-dem-peace-and-security-group-hustings/
Chris Huhne's position on Trident in this leadership election is the same as the one he took in the previous election. Note that it is not a 'cut out all UK nuclear capacity' position.
As for what happened at Harrogate the anti-Trident groups have to take reponsibility for putting forwards a badly botched initiative.
I happen to believe that if Chris had been leader at Harrogate the result would have been far more positive.
Linda, when you use the phrase "another example of Huhne opportunism" what are you referring to and who/what is your information source?
There should be less emotion about Trident and more cool reasoning. It is fear that the pro-replacement lobby exploit to get their way!
As far as I'm aware he abstained on Trident replacement and if so, in my view he was right to. He had run Ming a close second in the election and if he had voted against the main motion he would have been accused of attempting to undermine Ming and the defence team who had chosen to confront an unwilling conference on the issue. And as I believe in the best man for the job, I think it would have been a very bad idea to resign from the environmental brief which he was pre-eminently suited to handle.
Nick - I think you mean this. I would also point Linda to this.
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