Trident and parliament

Ironic that the government was given permission to start developing the new generation of its nuclear 'toys' by the votes of the opposition. Apart from the obvious comments about Labour MPs voting against their own government, or about the 80% (I think it was) polling against Trident, or even about the real Tory tendency being given an outing, there is the less-obvious comment about the tendency for sitting MPs not to favour PR voting systems. One of the arguments is against coalitions and relying on cross-party support to get legislation through. Well ... see where I'm going? It seems to me that the actual nature of bipartisan systems (which tend to be the result of FPTP systems of voting, I suspect) is to make the leading parties into rolling coalitions, but with the instability of the decadal make-overs as the inner alliances change. A PR system merely swaps the less accountable and transparent 'broad-church' nature of parties under bipartisan systems for a more transparent, coherent and focused set of parties.

Back to the vote itself, we're told this, which is some comfort, at least.

Mr Blair told wavering rebels that although they were being asked in principle to maintain Britain's independent deterrent, in practice they were merely being asked to sanction two years' work on the design and concept phase of the new system. He also contended that no parliament could bind another, in effect suggesting the final decision on signing the expensive contracts could be revisited by a government in 2012-2014, led either by David Cameron or Mr Brown.

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