The Labour party may have avoided a divisive vote on Trident this week, but that doesn’t mean that it can always avoid working out whether it should have a new position. Last night Maria Eagle, the Shadow Defence Secretary, told a fringe that though she had made her mind in 2007 that she was in favour of the renewal of the nuclear deterrent, she wouldn’t have resigned had there been a vote that called for Trident to be scrapped at this conference.
She said she’d reminded Corbyn when he offered her the job that she was pro-Trident, saying ‘I thought I need to make sure he remembers what my position is on this, because I don’t want him to appoint me without remembering, and he did remember, he knew what my position was and he still offered me the job and I accepted the job on the basis that we are going to have a debate, and I think this exemplifies this new politics’.
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