Skipper’s call to abandon a Trident replacement and save £60bn is a little simplistic. To portray the argument primarily in terms of cost is to risk appearing naive: you can’t put a price on a national security.

Nevertheless, Britain’s nuclear deterrent appears increasingly redundant.

Nuclear weapons are a hangover from a time when the world appeared to be a much simpler place. The cold war had fairly clearly defined sides and both interfered with other conflicts around the world as they strove to protect and extend their spheres of influence. Neither side worried too much about ethics, both were happy to turn a blind eye to brutal dictatorships which pledged allegiance. In this way, East and West happily sacrificed human rights across Africa, the Middle East, South America and Central Asia to the apparently greater cause of defeating the enemy. It was war, after all.

For Britain, the nuclear debate has also been about buying a place at the top table. The 1945 Labour government had to be seen to be preserving the country’s major power status and that meant getting a bomb with a union jack on it.

But now that we have enemies prepared to deploy suicide bombers, the threat of mutual destruction looks like a bluff that might too easily be called. (If it were a bluff; in The Fog of War, Robert McNamara reveals an exchange with Fidel Castro, in which the Cuban leader made it clear that he would have sacrificed his country to nuclear war.)

Simply scrapping Trident would not in itself make the world a much safer place. Nuclear weapons belonging to Pakistan or Israel would seem far more likely candidates for early detonation; one could imagine Pakistani weapons falling into the hands of extremists or Israel putting a stop to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Scrapping Britain’s nuclear deterrent would not in itself make the world a safer place. It should instead be used to put meat on the bones of Barack Obama’s vision for a nuclear weapons free world. Delaying the re-development of the British bomb, would be a significant gesture. Britain could halt the nuclear weapons programme – effectively disabling its nuclear deterrent – for a limited, but significant period; say five years.

Apart from saving a lot of money in the short term (to fund our much needed economic stimulus package without putting so much pressure on the bonds market) we would retain our seat at the negotiating table and gain some credibility with those countries – like Iran – who understandably argue that if we’re allowed to have the bomb, they should be allowed to have one too.

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I almost fell off the running machine at the gym yesterday when Sky News showed this image of Hazel Blears apparently leaking plans for MPs’ second homes allowance. But I righted myself, assuming it to be some satire… but no.

Given the recent security scare prompted by Bob Quick’s blunder and Caroline Flint’s similar error last year, the idea that Blears is simply stupid is not really credible. And it’s hard not to notice how perfectly presented the leaked memo is.

This crude method of breaking news is sleazy and yet served no purpose: Hazel Blears was clearly overwhelmed by some self-destructive urge. The prime minister should ask her to give in to that urge.

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As soon as we are done examining why David Cameron was wrong to push for Gordon Brown’s Smeargate apology, the death of Ian Tomlinson illustrates what a liability Tory bloggers are for the Conservative Party.

The smug — predictably anonymous — author of the award winning Letters From A Tory, has worked hard to defend the policing of the G20 and justify the brutality shown to Tomlinson; a theme s/he as warmed too.

Perhaps most worryingly, this cheerleader for the Conservative Party sees those who protest as legitimate targets for police violence, giving us a taste of how our democracy might fair under a new Tory government. But more on that another day.

That Tomlinson died not of a heart attack, but of internal bleeding, is shocking enough. That his first post-mortem was rushed and conducted by a pathologist with form, is perhaps more shocking again.

Letters From A Tory will no doubt be keener than ever to protect their identity tonight, which makes naming and shaming these people all the more vital. And if Cameron truly believes Gordon Brown is responsible for Derek Draper, he must accept responsibility for cultivating a Tory culture that tolerates the likes of this anonymous coward.

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At the end of a long week, Gordon Brown has apologised after high profile blogger Derek Draper and special advisor Damian McBride discussed plans to smear Tories online with a website modelled on the right wing Guido Fawkes. (We need to be careful not to call Paul Staines, who authors Guido Fawkes, a Tory as it has been suggested that such a smear may be actionable.)

Ever the opportunist, Cameron has argued that Brown allowed a culture to develop whereby underhand smearing of opponents was seen as legitimate. In forcing an apology, Cameron suggests that Brown is responsible for supporters’ behaviour. It’s a dangerous path for any leader to tread. Every party has its mavericks and leaders cannot control them. Whether you are a blogger or a special advisor, these smear campaigns are wrong. They devalue politics and put people off voting altogether. Yet bloggers are effectively unsackable.

Given that the Draper/McBride project, was discussed as a response to the behaviour of Tory bloggers, Cameron is on particularly dangerous ground.

A couple of years ago I named and shamed Dominic Fisher as the author of PragueTory. Dominic Fisher had smeared a Labour councillor, attempting to brand him a racist, and promised to collect more ‘scalps’. Following his outing, Fisher’s blogging was substantially curtailed.

After Smeargate, this is how Labour should take on the Tories: Actively identify anonymous right-wing bloggers (by legal means, obviously), catalogue their most embarrassing outbursts, name and shame.

It’s hard to see how David Cameron would be able to control someone like Dominic Fisher who, ever the hypocrite, now argues for resignations. It is in the nature of things that a Tory blogger will mess up, just as this Labour blogger did.

Cameron can then be expected to take responsibility and show Brown how it’s done.

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What to do with the banks is set to be a significant post-recession battleground, with the Conservatives already looking towards relatively straightforward privatisation.

To be fair, they have pledged to break the banks up. That would at least introduce some much needed competition to the sector and spread the risk should things go wrong, but it lacks imagination and is fairly obvious.

Real innovation and new thinking is coming not from the opposition, but the government with Alistair Darling expected to back mutuals. While the mutual sector has not been immune from the credit crunch, the Co-operative Bank has continued to grow its profits and our remaining mutuals have proved far more stable than the PLCs.

Of course, if David Cameron’s Conservative Co-operative Movement had been for real, the Tories would have got here already.

According to the FT, Michael Stephenson, general secretary of the Co-operative Party, a Labour Party affiliate, backs a new large mutual formed from a merger of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.

But there is no reason to create giant mutual institutions. When the time is right, we should break up the banking sector and create a diverse range of institutions, some of which may be PLCs, but many of which should be mutuals based on the traditional building society, co-operative and credit union models.

Such diversity would create a more competitive, yet fairer, banking industry for all and reduce the risk of a future calamity.

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‘By focussing on class, we would effectively be conceding that we don’t have anything to say about Tory policies.’
– Tom Harris MP

Like Bob Piper, we should all be shocked that Labour MP Tom Harris doesn’t seem to understand the importance of social class and why a class based analysis of politics should continue to inform Labour Party policy (there’s a clue in the name).

From his short piece, Tom appears to accept the Tory line that the politics of class is the politics of envy. That it’s about poking fun at the privileged or trying to get them back for some misconceived wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A class-based analysis of society acknowledges that the biggest determining factor in anyone’s life is the accident of their birth. Some are born to wealthy parents and get to go to public school, others are born to drug addicts and drop out.

A party for labour should promote the idea that society – not just the state – has a duty to recognise this huge disparity in opportunity and do what it can to mitigate its effects. This underlying principle should inform, and provide a focus for, all social policy.

Far from leaving Labour with nothing to say about Tory policies, as Tom Harris claims, focussing on class provides an easy tool with which to analysis them. Of each proposal, we need ask; will this make Britain a fairer place or not?

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Sir Michael Parkinson is either very brave or very foolish to launch an attack on Jade Goody’s memory, but his words will strike a chord with many who have been alienated by the Diana-style public grieving.

Jade suffered a terrible death she did not deserve and lives have probably been saved as cervical cancer screening rates have improved. That doesn’t make her a saint but we should show some generosity towards the recently deceased except when they were particularly awful.

Goody was exposed in the Celebrity Big Brother house as a bully who needed everyone else to conform to her worldview. She was not afraid to use a race as a stick to beat her victims with, but was not particularly racist. She’d have been just as at home calling someone for being too fat or too thin. Her husband is a thug, twice convicted of violent assault. On the face it, poor role models all round.

And yet while Jade Goody was no great role model, she was not so bad that we should deny her fans their moment of grief.

A product of her environment — criminal, drug addict parents on a rough estate — Jade Goody was uneducated, easy to mock and easier to judge. Sadly, a great many people, people rarely portrayed in the media as anything more than scum, genuinely identified with her and that is more of an indictment of our society than of Jade Goody.

In writing Jade Goody off as a poor role model, Michael Parkinson has taken what appears to be an easy option; bury Jade and her like, lock up their husbands and forget about them. He fails to recognise that Jade was not as stupid as she seemed. She was capable of learning, changing and having aspirations for her children. And those are qualities to admire and reasons to hope.

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Back in May 2004 it seemed anti-capitalist protest was dead. Now you could be forgiven for thinking it’s back. But not really.

The G20 protest is no not one protest at all, but many simultaneous protests. We even have a prominent pro-globalisation ‘one currency one country’ placard. People are protesting about a strike in Glasgow, against coal, against nuclear weapons, climate change, Gaza and much more.

Some of these are complimentary, but many are not.

There’s nothing wrong with protest, of course, but here everyone was drowned out by everyone else rendering the whole thing directionless and meaningless.

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The upstairs room of the Camden Head, Islington (there is a Camden Head in Camden, so don’t get confused) is a great little comedy venue. It’s what you call intimate, although it could do with its own bar.

Monday 16 March had found us hungry for laughs, but Monday nights aren’t exactly peak and we didn’t want to end up at an open mike session or pay West End prices. Time Out recommended the Fortnight Club for a value-for-money (I forget how much, but it was cheap) line-up consisting of Andre Vincent, Simon Brodkin, Milton Jones, Mary Bourke, Nathan Caton, Joe Wilkinson and MC Logan Murray as his alter-ego Ronnie Rigsby.

The pitch is that these are all headline acts that need to try out some new material. Each gets five or ten minutes, so if they flop (and some did) then it’s not so bad as someone else is bound to be quite good (and they were). Ronnie Rigsby came across as a shouty old twat to start with, but we warmed to him and he held the thing together well.

A good time was had by all. Nevertheless, given that the club is set up as a safe venue where comics may risk failure as they strive to deliver new comedy, frequent sniping at Horne and Corden’s unfunny sketch show sat uneasily with us. There was a little too much schadenfreude (and it’s the weaker acts that do it) and we were thinking: ‘Ronnie keeps saying you’re a headline act, but I’ve never heard of you and I can’t imagine that nonsense reaching the dizzying heights of BBC3.’

But that’s a little too harsh; the Fortnight Club is still recommended.

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