Trident

Should it be renewed in full at a cost of £30 billion?

Or should there be a cut-down version coming in at roughly half that amount?

Or something else? Or nothing at all?

Growing up in the 1980s, the threat of nuclear destruction was still quite real; as a teenager I remember being totally freaked by "Edge Of Darkness" (wouldn't mind seeing that again) and then of course there was Chernobyl around the same time, plus Reagan had his finger on the nuclear button...

But how real a threat is it now? It would be insane for any country to launch a nuclear strike against any other, simply because the consequences would be far graver for the aggressor. There's enough nuclear weaponry in the world to destroy it several times over and surely anyone with half a mind would realise that initiating a nuclear conflict would not only be suicidal for themselves, but probably most of the rest of the world too, whether they liked it or not (probably not).

The UK hasn't got £30 billion to blow on a weapons system that will almost definitely never be used, so I say let's just pretend we've renewed it, and it's better than ever. Who's going to ever find out that it doesn't exist? No-one, that's who.