Besieged Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has generously given the MP’s in the Labour Party the opportunity to vote with their conscience rather than his in tonight’s vote on the Trident missile system.

The Trident Missile System is essentially a network of nuclear powered submarines carrying apocalyptic weapons of mass destruction that can be launched after the end of the world has started. Essentially a spite bomb.

It has been described as an essential deterrent, though precisely who they are supposed to deter is beyond us at The Herald. They didn’t seem to deter the riots in London, the 7/7 bombings or for that matter the Bastille Day massacre in Nice last week.

We seem to own them on the basis that Russia has some, the assumption being that learning the Cyrilic alphabet would be more difficult than living through a nuclear winter. Douglas, our intern, has seen all four Mad Max films and assures us that it doesn’t look much fun, the nuclear winter thing not the Cyrilic.

Fortunately for Lockheed Martin the Labour benches have consciences that include Angela Eagle and Rochdale’s own text pest Simon Danczuk, or rather they would if he wasn’t suspended for something about expenses.

Quentin D Fortesqueue is a founding editor of The Rochdale Herald. Part time amateur narcissist and full time satirist Quentin is never happier than when playing his lute and drinking a full bodied Bordeaux. He rarely plays the lute and never gets to drink Bordeaux.