Sturgeon is the only one on the button when it comes to Trident

IT’S bizarre how, for some, the mark of a true leader in the UK comes down to whether they would be willing to press the nuclear button.

When asked, Jo Swinson said “Yes” with such ease, the question could just have easily been: “Do you like carrots?”

Every day the election feels more like a competition for who can pee the highest.

The Lib Dems say the environment is a priority and policies include clamping down on British companies selling goods from deforested areas, where orangutans are having a hellish time.

The party frowns on palm oil but can’t rule out triggering a nuclear explosion which would vaporise all life within miles.

The death rate in a nuclear explosion would be 90 per cent and the firestorm whipped up by hurricanes would suck the oxygen from the atmosphere, with millions dying for decades to come from radiation poisoning.

On the upside, the Lib Dems have secured the orangutan vote.

Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard’s view on the topic of nukes was less clear, in an interview brilliantly executed by STV’s Colin Mackay.

A lifelong member of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Leonard stood by the UK party’s stance of renewing Trident, which indicates he joined the campaign for nuclear disarmament just for the rather splendid badge.

He grappled for a coherent defence, plucking random thoughts from his brain – like it was that messy kitchen drawer hiding everything from a Coldplay CD to granda’s teeth. To potentially commit mass murder or not comes down to a principle which should never be traded for votes.

Labour’s radically left manifesto is laudable but pouring £200billion into Trident while promising to scrap Universal Credit is bonkers fiscal logic.

Many who would support his leftist manifesto can’t vote for it on the principle they are against nuclear weapons.

In what other circumstances would the selling point of a purchase be that you would be crazy to use it?

With the precision of an Excocet, Nicola Sturgeon just came right out and said she wouldn’t press the button, comparing the question to a “virility test”. She said: “Even those who buy into the idea of mutually assured destruction should balk at the casual way in which political discourse on this topic has developed.”

Sturgeon added of WMDs: “Their potential for death and destruction deserve better than trigger-happy bravado. It’s time that nuclear advocates spelled out the reality of what their position means.”

To retain Trident or not is not like expressing a preference for butter or margarine.

Any voters who now think she is a woose, rather than a principled woman, should try saying it to her face. Sturgeon joined the CND before the SNP and, being a girly swot, she must have read their aims and objectives.

Being clever, she worked out that CND campaigns to rid the world of nuclear weapons and nowhere does it say “apart from Trident”.

The Tories, of course, love a nuke, and pressing the button to obliterate millions of poor people anywhere outside of London is a dreamy efficiency austerity can’t provide.

This election is a quandary for many voters, especially on the left, especially given the Labour Party’s predominantly commendable manifesto.

But let’s face it, tactical voting is way too complicated for most of us, given the contradictory and confusing agenda many of the parties are pitching.

I would have my hand chopped off before I would vote for the Tories or the Lib Dems and Labour has left me befuddled.

So really, the SNP is the only option left if we are to cut the deadweights of Westminster, Brexit and Trident loose.