Ah, to sit and watch the return to the good old days of chronic Labour dysfunction:
Jeremy Corbyn has suffered a major blow to his authority after a bid by the Labour leadership to press for a vote on the renewal of the Trident nuclear programme was overwhelmingly rejected at the party’s conference.
Hours after the opening of the event in Brighton, Britain’s largest trade unions and the party membership spurned a call for the conference to hold a debate and a vote on Wednesday about whether Britain should renew Trident.
In a severe embarrassment to Corbyn, who won the support of the main trade unions in the leadership contest, the call for a debate on Trident was supported by just 0.16% of the trade union vote. The support among constituency Labour parties was little higher at 7.1%.
And why did the unions oppose Corbyn’s call for unilateral nuclear disarmament? Why, jobs of course!
Speaking to Sky News, GMB leader Paul Kenny said: “Our current position with the GMB - we won’t be supporting the scrapping of Trident for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which nobody can come up with how we’re going to deal with the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who rely on that defence industry’s jobs.
“People need to get real — this is not coffee bar politics — this is the real world.”
A senior Unite source said: “Don’t expect us to be on the wrong side of members’ jobs.”
There’s principle for you. Remind me again which party puts profit before people . . .
