TRIDENT whistleblower William McNeilly is now in military custody. For many of us, he is a hero, not a criminal. He should get a medal, but he’ll probably get a jail sentence for letting the public know what most of us had suspected for quite a while – that Trident is a disaster waiting to happen. An online petition to pardon William McNeilly has already received thousands of signatures. We can only hope that the government will pay attention.

Of course, nuclear warheads are designed to cause disaster, but the UK’s nuclear deterrent is accidentally unsafe as well as deliberately unsafe. It’s so unsafe that it might not blow up half the planet when it’s supposed to, which is allegedly a bad thing, or it might blow up half of Scotland when it’s not supposed to, which is definitely a bad thing.

Every day the MoD plays Rosneath roulette with Scotland’s future and the future of the globe. And this is all supposed to make us feel safe. Do you feel safe? I don’t. And neither did William McNeilly, who actually served on the Trident submarines, which is why he blew the whistle on the fatal farce that is the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

What makes it even more galling is that there is no prize in this game of plutonium poker: it’s not just Scotland that has nothing to gain. Not using Trident means we waste billions of pounds, using Trident means we waste a world. But Scotland has everything to lose. An accident could easily pollute the Clyde forever and turn the West of Scotland into a radioactive wasteland that’s uninhabitable for generations – a Faslane Fukushima with glow in the dark fish suppers. The fish would be deep-fried even as they came out the water.

Not even Jackie Baillie could survive, and there are few who are thicker skinned than Faslane’s own nuclear cheerleading MSP, who claims just about every job in Dunbartonshire depends on Trident and the entire county would turn into a wasteland without it. You’d have thought that a brass neck would provide a modicum of protection against radiation poisoning, but apparently not. The only consolation is that the nuclear winter wouldn’t be too bad, as it would just be normal weather for summer in Scotland.

You don’t really need a whistleblower or a Russian spy to have worked out that Trident is a clapped-out disaster zone. Every other institution of the British state is unfit for purpose, strapped for cash, short of trained staff, demoralised, managed by sociopaths, and is held together with bits of Blu-tack, wishful thinking, and the rapidly diminishing supply of the magic fairy dust of public confidence which, like land and decent Scottish news programming, is not being made any more.

The MoD in particular is notorious for its cost overruns and its inability to manage projects. There is a long and depressing litany of defence projects which cost many times the original estimates and still have proven unfit for purpose. The MoD is incapable of making a toy battleship from an Airfix kit without costs overrunning by billions of pounds, and it would still sink in the bath, defeated by the forces of a rubber duck and a sponge. If the MoD was responsible for making your weans’ toys, they might just be ready by the time you become a great-grandparent. So no one ought to be surprised by William McNeilly’s revelation that gluing together a Trident missile launch system was beyond them. The problems of a new Astute class of submarine were well documented even before one of them came to grief on the rocks in the Kyle of Lochalsh.

Yet during the independence referendum we were assured by the defence minister that the UK’s nuclear weapons were all that stood between Scotland and a possible threat from outer space. Seemingly an alien civilisation so far in advance of ours that it possesses the technology to allow it to traverse the immense distances between the stars is going to be deterred by nuclear submarines which are unable to complete a successful orbit of the Isle of Skye. Calmac ferries are more intimidating, especially when the bar runs out of drink.

THESE are the same people who have turned a Dalgety beach into a nuclear no-go area, and who refuse to pay for the clean up costs or to acknowledge that they’ve done anything wrong. In this case the source of the pollution was radioactive paint, so it’s easy to imagine just how reluctant they’re going to be to admit to a far greater and more dangerous mess. This week the MoD issued a statement saying: “The Royal Navy disagrees with McNeilly’s subjective and unsubstantiated personal views.” A view is of course subjective by definition, unless you are an MoD spokespook in which case your view is vetted by the security services. McNeilly didn’t release any photos or other information which could be used to further compromise the already compromised safety of the Faslane base, so of course it’s unsubstantiated. The MoD wants to hide McNeilly away in a cell, and lock away concerns about Trident along with him.

But the truth is out. The Trident missile system doesn’t do what it says on its £300 billion tin. It’s a relic from a Cold War past but nowadays the threats we face are very different in nature. Trident is unusable, even if it could ever have been used in the first place. It exists solely as a form of Viagra for an aging superpower which ceased to be a superpower many decades ago. It’s a sexual fantasy of potency for British governments, an empire substitute for those addicted to punching above their weight. Who exactly are they supposed to be punching? They never say.

But according to William McNeilly, Trident is so unreliable that most of the time it can’t be launched, so even with the danger and expense of the UK’s phallic nuclear post empire sex aid, they still can’t get it up.