I’m not sure quite how far I actually agree with this (I’ve not even tried to think through whether Trident should be replaced or not) that there is no military reason to replace Trident. But, if we accept that (for the sake of argument) then the rest of what Polly says today makes absolute sense.

It’s an entirely political decision to make the Labour Party look tough on defense. How very strange, still, stopped clocks and all that I suppose.

One minor point though:

It is a costly "insurance" against unknown unknowns, when more is
needed for the very well knowns – small military expeditions and
peacekeeping missions.

Things like the defense budget are not, of course, set in stone. Without bothering to look up the numbers it’s currently somewhere in the 5-10% of the total government budget isn’t it? As POolly says elsewhere, Trident is only 5% of that number. Taken together this might mean that we need another 0.25% to 0.5% of total government spending to shift from something else to the military to pay for those small expeditions and peacekeeping missions.

So, which other part of the budget shall we take that from? Given that defense is indeed the first duty of all and any governments, surely we can give up just a little bit of some of that social spending to do what we ought to?