Day blah of the election campaign

While most publications came out denouncing the viciously personal attack by the gregarious Defence Secretary Michael Fallon (and all Tory interviewees refused to repeat or support his words), The Daily Mail, that stalwart purveyor of the ad hominem diatribe, claimed it to be "refreshing" to see such poison, I mean, passion into the electoral campaign.  But it is no surprise that Paul Dacre and his cohorts should enjoy Fallon's outburst accusing the Labour leader of treachery, both within his family and on the international stage - The Wail after all published a highly dubious feature on the Marxist academic Ralph Miliband, Ed's dad, with the banner headline "The Man Who Hated Britain" with a sidebar editorial saying the 'sins of the father' would be transmitted to those of the son.  When Miliband was given a right of reply, it was a marginalised piece fighting for attention with a reprint of the direly contentious feature (which was twice as big) on the same inside page spread.
If religion is the opium of the masses, in the opinion of Karl Marx, then The Daily Mail is the strychnine, in mine.  The famously smudgeable ink must have psychotropic attributes as it is absorbed into the bloodstream of the readers to make them suggestible and susceptible to such rancid claptrap.  But maybe Miliband could take it as a compliment that he is feared by the right-wing tabloids.  The (non-)revelation that he had a 'secret' relationship with the "BBC's Stephanie Flanders' shows how desperate the hacks have become - Ed must be red because he was bumping ugly with an employee of a dastardly left-wing bastion.  It also gave them a reason to publish a very comely picture of Ms Flanders in power boots and elegant stitchings.  As UKIP sheds support, with as many 'returning home' to Labour as to the Conservatives, the main party of opposition enjoying a buoyantly healthy lead in London over the Tories (despite Boris 'The Animal' Johnson's efforts) and Miliband finally drawing ahead of David Cameron in the personal competency stakes, a Labour wipeout in Scotland may be academic.  For all talk of a hung parliament, Labour may just scrape a tiny majority.  We shall see as Labour support over the last 45 years always nosedives ten days out from the ballot boxes being placed in situ but at the moment that is small consolation for the propaganda machines of the right-wing press.
However, for the first time since the campaign started, The Daily Telegraph ran with a main story critical of the Tories over a refusal to maintain a two per cent level of GDP spending on defence.  And here we return to Fallon's hyperbole about Miliband kowtowing to the SNP and ditching the UK's nuclear 'deterrent', thus betraying the country.  Just get rid of the £30bn per annum useless phallic submarines and the mutliple warhead-tipped wangs they carry.  Of the four Trident submarines only one is ever on active duty - would the Americans, under whose nuclear umbrella Germany, Italy and Spain happily exist, be really concerned about the depletion of NATO forces by one submarine?  It's not really independent as it couldn't be used without the say-so of the Americans anyway.  It is just a keyring fob on the ignition key of the American juggernaut.  It fires up Scottish nationalists by being based at Faslane thus endangering the UK's constitutional integrity.  It would never be used in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or against ISIS and Russia is a declining power that is resulting to media disinformation and cyber attack precisely because it can't compete militarily (much of its nuclear force is inoperable for that matter, for so long have they rusted in their silos).  To give them up would not endanger the UK's permanent seat on the UN Security Council, not that this country really deserves such a seat these days but wielding a veto would block any attempt at defenestration.  Finally, it would be a wonderful example to the world and especially to Iran that the West can show humility and genuine commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world.  And Britain could easily meet its two per cent of GDP target by spending it on military hardware that will get an outing.  As Professor Paul Kennedy said in The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, just as the construction and subsequent possession of a few dreadnoughts by Austria-Hungary and Piedmontese Italy pre-Great War was a sign of weakness (being relatively insignificant powers) rather than strength, so is ownership of an expensive vanity deterrent that isn't even independent.