Aren't there better things to spend time talking about?

As a general rule, I think Labour politicians should spend the bulk of their time talking publicly about things which unite them, and which people are interested in, and as little time as possible talking about things which they disagree about, and which relatively few people are interested in, and where those that are interested have fixed views which aren't going to be changed.

The renewal of Trident is a simple issue, and there's been plenty of debate about it over the last few months, for any who want to take part. Some swing voters think that if the government renews it, then they are making the world a more dangerous place, behaving in a morally reprehensible way and wasting tens of billions, other swing voters think that if the government doesn't renew Trident then it is playing fast and loose with our national security. There's a difference between holding an opinion which most MPs disagree with (which I suspect is my, unilateralist, position), and having issues decided on without proper debate and scrutiny. There are many issues like that, this isn't one of them, and it is more than a little corrosive when people start claiming that an issue wasn't properly discussed when in fact it was and most MPs happened to disagree with them.

Why devote more time to a full public debate about Trident (whatever that may mean), when we could be talking about how to reduce poverty in Britain and the wider world, how to make sure young people are less likely to cause and be victims of anti-social behaviour, how to make sure everyone has somewhere decent to live, how the government at all levels can involve people more in the decisions it makes, or any number of other issues which would genuinely benefit from a wider public debate and which we don't spend enough time talking about and debating.