More nuclear fallout

First Malcolm Chisholm went. Then Jim Devine went, and commenters on my post about him are still chewing the fat over his motivation.

Now Nigel Griffiths, Deputy Leader of the House of Commons and MP for Edinburgh South, has resigned his ministerial post so as to vote against the government on Trident.

I don't wish to start the motivation debate again, in spite of his wafer-thin majority over the Liberal Democrats: Griffiths is not the kind of MP who would risk his short-term ministerial career simply in the hope of keeping his seat in the long term - there has to be something more.

How can I say this with certainty? His position was vulnerable at the last election, his constituency is packed with students and he stayed in the government and voted for top-up fees. The primary reason that he didn't lose his seat was because the LibDem candidate antagonised the student popluation herself, by supporting a quota on HMO licences in the area.

No, believe me, he must mean this, he must believe this, he must be doing what he genuinely thinks is the right thing.

On a wider point, here we have prominent Labour politicians, in strong positions, climbing the ladder and close to Gordon Brown, so going far in the future, willing to put all that at risk to oppose Trident. If that's how strong feeling is in the Labour Party, this vote might have trouble passing even with Tory support...