Disarming words

However, when the SNP  conference narrowly voted to support Nato membership in 2012 the resolution made it very clear that this was conditional on the removal of Trident.

The view of conference was that if Nato membership is conditional on keeping nuclear weapons then Scotland won’t join the alliance.

The “deal or no deal” question was asked in March this year. Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon both made it clear that there would be “no deal”.

Finance secretary John Swinney explained to the BBC that “one of the purposes of independence is to remove nuclear weapons from Scottish land and Scottish waters”.

The problems with a deal go beyond the issue of what the SNP leadership and conference have said.

The Ministry of Defence doesn’t just want to keep a  corner of the Clyde Naval Base for a few years. It wants complete control of Faslane and Coulport as a sovereign base area for the next 50 years, throughout the life of the £100 billion Trident Replacement.

This would be unacceptable in a newly independent Scotland with a constitution that banned the bomb.

There will be no deal, and Trident will not be moved, because there is no viable alternative.

This means that Scots can, with one stroke of a pencil, disarm Britain’s weapons of mass destruction.

John Ainslie

Scottish Campaign for  Nuclear Disarmament

Southpark Avenue

Glasgow