GORDON Brown will this week tell the United Nations that Britain can no longer afford a fleet of multi-billion pound nuclear submarines it never needed in the first place.
The prime minister will offer to scale back the Trident fleet as part of a new round of strategic talks aimed at making sure he does not have to sack too many of the demented public sector workers who are still willing to vote for the Labour Party.
Dr Tom Logan, of the Institute for International Studies, said: "The story of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent is the story of a man on £30,000 a year who gets into massive debt so he can buy an Aston Martin that costs a fortune to maintain, sits in his driveway for 300 days a year and makes him look like a cock."
He added: "The Russians were never going to attack us. You can't fire a nuclear missile at Osama Bin Laden and if Iran ever does build an atomic bomb my feeling is they will probably aim it at Tel Aviv rather than Darlington."
But defence analyst Julian Cook insisted: "Britain's desire to be a big player on the world stage has delivered huge benefits including being dragged into a series of catastrophic wars with America's throbbing tumescence lodged firmly at the back of our throat, while at the same time being unable to afford decent roads, railways, schools and hospitals. It's what we call a 'win-win'.
"Norway, on the other hand, does not have nuclear submarines, or a permanent seat at the UN security council and is not even a particularly big player in Scandinavia.
"And all it has to show for this embarrassing error of judgement is phenomenal public services, about £850bn worth of North Sea oil money in the bank and a-ha, who, as everyone knows, were nowhere near as good as Duran Duran."
A Downing Street spokesman said: "By scrapping a submarine we will, at long last, have money to invest in paying back some of the humongous debts we have racked up from bailing out all the banks that we failed to regulate properly."
Dr Logan added: "You see, it's so fucked up that just saying it's fucked up does not even begin to express how completely and utterly fucked up it really is."
