There is something of a boating theme to today’s posts on here as the latest news in the drip-drip-drip of announcements before George Osborne’s CSR speech is that David Cameron has decided to delay the the replacement of Trident until at least beyond 2015.

Given the choice between Trident being replaced from tomorrow and Trident being replaced after the next parliamentary term, anyone against nuclear weapons would opt for the latter so in that respect today’s news is to be welcomed. However, given the choice between deciding once and for all that we will not renew our nuclear weapons and postponing the decision until later, the former is by far preferable. So, in short, good news but the fight goes on.

In political terms, the Conservatives are at risk of leaving themselves exposed by attempting an understandable compromise. The hawkish right wing of the Tory party will be deeply dismayed that they will have to wait longer for new toys in the arsenal and the left-wing anti-nuclear camp may be concerned that this was their best chance to put Trident to bed forever and that opportunity has been missed.

For the Lib Dems, while they have been criticised for reneging on some of their principles on here before, they should only be applauded when they make good on their objective to ‘leftify’ how a Conservative majority Government would have operated. It looks like this is one area where Clegg, Alexander, Huhne and Cable can be satisfied with their contribution.

For Labour, I have been unable to find a response from Jim Murphy on the Trident issue as it seems Jim’s deputy Kevan Jones has taken the lead on this one. I rather suspect that the coalition postponing the Trident decision will push Labour into being more ardent defenders of the (literally) indefensible and I equally suspect that Jim Murphy will step back from the headlines, for fear of painting Labour as the sole defenders of Trident which may not play well at the Scottish Parliament elections.

All in all though, this is surely a good day for the Greens, for the SNP and a for a significant tranche of the Lib Dems who have all argued that building Cold War bombs is a hideous waste of money.