SNP's simplistic position on nuclear weapons is at odds with the new reality of the world we live in

If the Hallmark greetings card company did political slogans, “Bairns Not Bombs!” would be a best-seller.

Sentimental, comforting and meaningless, this particular rallying call was a favourite of Yes Scotland during 2014’s independence referendum campaign.

The implication was clear: To support the maintenance of the United Kingdom was to be an enthusiast for war. A No vote was the cruel choice.

That position had never looked more facile.

For 60 years, the SNP’s opposition to nuclear weapons has been totemic. To some, this unshakable position shows great moral clarity. To others, it’s standing proof that, for all their talk of stopping the World so that Scotland may “get on”, the Scottish nationalists are, by nature, insular.

Of course one does not have to be in favour of military aggression to support the preservation of nuclear bombs. The argument that ownership of this weaponry acts as a deterrent against aggressors is, to quite a lot of us, absolutely compelling.

There remains, I feel, a degree of denial – across the political spectrum – that the world order is shifting significantly.

Reality tells a different story.

US president Donald Trump’s humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval office nine days ago was proof, if proof were needed, that old alliances can no longer be depended upon.

Across Europe, governments are coming to terms with the reality that the transatlantic alliance, forged during World War Two, is in tatters.

Against this backdrop, the SNP’s blanket refusal to even discuss its position on defence looks reckless.

Last week, the nationalists’ former Westminster leader Ian Blackford made an intervention which suggested at least some SNP figures understand that the word that existed when their party was formed has changed beyond recognition.

Blackford’s proposal was a modest one. He suggested that the SNP should consider changing its position on nuclear weapons from unilateral to multilateral disarmament.

While Blackford was pushing at that particular door, the nationalists’ former defence spokesman at Westminster, Stewart McDonald, was calling for the ban on The Scottish National Investment Bank putting money into in the defence industry to be overturned.

The interventions of both men were small but significant. Neither called for the SNP to reverse its opposition to nuclear weapons in Scotland but they demonstrated that at least some members of their party are willing to discuss whether they’ve got it entirely right on nuclear weapons.

Blackford and McDonald are no longer MPs. They’re free to comment on SNP policy without fear of angering party whips.

What the nationalists need now is for someone with authority to back their calls.

Back in October 2012, fearful that the party’s isolationist instincts would harm its prospects of winning the independence referendum, then leader Alex Salmond – with the support of the SNP’s then defence spokesman, Angus Robertson – succeeded in changing policy on Nato. After a fraught debate at the party’s annual conference, it was agreed – by just 29 votes – that an independent Scotland would continue membership.

This new position was not entirely coherent. The nationalists retained their complete opposition to nukes, while expecting Nato to accept them into the club. The SNP assumed a lot of a independent Scotland’s international neighbours.

But, while the shift on Nato policy was messy, it showed that the nationalist movement was not devoid of realists.

My understanding is that a number of senior SNP figures think it’s time for the party to have another debate on defence.

I don’t, I should say, detect a hunger for the party to rush to overturn its opposition to nuclear weapons but there is, among some of those in the upper echelons of the SNP, a recognition that the changes taking place globally cannot simply be ignored.

The challenge, then, is for those leading figures to persuade party members who, for decades, have bought into the idea that to support the nuclear deterrent is to be a bloodthirsty warmonger.

Time is of the essence on this matter.

All of us, regardless of party loyalties, need to know that our party of Government is open to how best Scotland can play a role in a new order.

If – as the SNP has long claimed – Scotland’s natural allies lie on continental Europe rather than south of Gretna, then how does the SNP’s tired sloganeering square with the words and actions of, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron who has offered his nation’s arsenal as protection for Europe?

In common with all nationalist parties, the SNP offers simplistic solutions to difficult problems. Adherents to the party’s ideology are asked to believe that turning their backs on their closest neighbours will transform their lives for the better.

The SNP, sensitive to the charge that their politics is inward looking, have made much of their “internationalism” over recent years, but words are cheap. Do the nationalists’ truly think Scotland should be more closely aligned with our European neighbours and, if so, don’t they think that discussing how that co-operation might look in these troubling times is important?

For a long time, the SNP’s defence policy has been the equivalent of drawing a CND logo on a school bag and too few of its politicians – McDonald, Robertson and Blackford aside – have considered seriously how an independent Scotland might be as safe as possible. I don’t think any of those men are especially hawkish. Rather, they simply understand of the importance – and complexity – of geopolitical alliances.

With the next Holyrood election just 14 months away, there is political self-interest in the SNP thinking again on nuclear weapons.

Is First Minister John Swinney really going to go into next year’s campaign claiming old nationalist solutions will help solve new global problems?

When it came to nuclear weapons, SNP politicians used to ask us to think of the bairns. It’s time, now, for them to start engaging their brains.