LESS than a week into a new year and Yorkshire politicians are already at the forefront of the two national debates that will dominate the political landscape – Labour’s future and Tory positioning ahead of the referendum on European Union membership.

Fresh from his heroic House of Commons speech in favour of bombing Syria, and then surviving Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘revenge reshuffle’ in which the two men have reached some form of temporary truce, Leeds Central MP Hilary Benn now faces a conflict of loyalty on the vexed issue of whether Labour should support the renewal of Trident.

While there are many logical reasons for abandoning Britain’s nuclear deterrent, Benn does not want his party to return to the 1980s when it was seen as soft on defence. Will he be able to remain as Shadow Foreign Secretary – or is Mr Corbyn too weak to sack Benn because such a move would precipitate a Shadow Cabinet walkout?

Up against Benn will be Leeds-educated Jon Trickett, a veteran peace campaigner. The Hemsworth MP was a leading member of the anti-Vietnam war movement in the 1960s and also voted against the Iraq war in 2003.

In March 2007, Trickett led a rebellion of over 90 MPs who voted against the renewal of Trident during the dying days of the Blair government. Now the tables are turned, as Trickett finds himself as a leading member of Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet.

Anyone who doubts the capacity of nuclear weapons to divide the Labour Party – the reason Maria Eagle has been replaced by Corbyn’s Islington neighbour Emily Thornberry as defence spokeswoman – should recall the bitter splits of the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1960, Hugh Gaitskell, the then leader, asked the Labour Party Conference: “Do you think that overnight we can become the pacifists, the fellow travellers that other people are?”

Fast forward to today, and think of the huge pressure that pro-Trident Labour MPs will come under from present-day ‘fellow travellers’ in the shape of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Greenpeace, the Stop the War Coalition and Momentum.

Despite persistent booing, Gaitskell pledged in 1960 to “fight and fight and fight again” in order to avoid Labour going down what he called “the suicidal path of unilateral disarmament which will leave our country defenceless and alone”.

Let us hope that in 2016 Hilary Benn assumes the role of Gaitskell in order to save the party that he loves and that the moderate trade unions, more concerned about saving jobs in the defence industry, keep Corbyn’s unilateralism at bay.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives face splits of their own on Europe with Philip Davies, the maverick Conservative MP for Shipley, at the heart of the ‘No’ campaign.

Never a politician to run from the sound of gunfire (he regularly re-tweets abuse thrown at him on Twitter), Davies has been waiting for this moment all his adult life. He was one of the founding members of the ‘Better Off Out’ campaign in 2006 and recently described the EU as “a backward looking, inward-facing, protection racket designed to prop up inefficient continental farmers and businessmen”.

At the forefront of that campaign will be Ukip’s leader, Nigel Farage. The irony is that Farage is both his party’s greatest asset and its greatest liability. Yes, he drives Ukip support like no other figure. For most of the voting public, he is Ukip. However, he is the classic Marmite politician, putting off as many voters as he attracts. The irony is that the ‘No’ campaign would stand a better chance of winning if he were to take a back seat in the referendum.

One of the reasons why the ‘No’ side lost the 1975 referendum was because they were seen as the extremists – ‘a motley crew’ of Enoch Powell, Michael Foot and Tony Benn – while the ‘Yes’ side was full of well-fed politicians like William Whitelaw, Reginald Maudling and Roy Jenkins who conveyed a sense of moderation and trust.

Farage is too intolerant of criticism to heed my advice. One thing is fairly certain. This will be Farage’s last great battle due to long-standing health issues.

Instead, the ‘No’ camp should look to a younger generation in the shape of a blonde-haired, former Etonian. I refer not to Boris Johnson, but to Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate in the London Mayor contest in May.

Son of the late Sir James Goldsmith, who funded the Referendum Party, Zac has all the charm of Boris without the butter fingers. Were the suave Richmond Park MP to come out decisively against the EU, it might help turn moderate opinion towards ‘Brexit’.

So, 2016 is likely to be a year in which the mavericks of British politics will be let loose upon us, but my sense is that moderation will triumph in the end.

Ultimately, political debates are not normally won by the extremists. We saw this in the Scottish independence referendum in September 2014. It was not the noisy nationalists who triumphed in the end, but the quiet, moderating voices. It was the same last May when the so-called ‘shy Tories’ delivered David Cameron an unexpected victory.

Will history repeat itself? Don’t bet against it.