GET the nukes out of the Clyde, the SNP have demanded.
The call came after all but one of Scotland’s MPs voted against the renewal of Trident in the Commons last night.
Despite that, the government motion was overwhelmingly passed.
Speaking after the debate, SNP Westminster Leader Angus Robertson MP said the new Prime Minister had promised to govern in the interests of “all nations and people in the UK”.
“If that is true she must now make clear she respects Scotland’s decision,” he said. “The UK Government must work with the Scottish Government to ensure the earliest safe withdrawal of nuclear warheads from Scotland, and to discuss the retention and diversification of HMNB Clyde as a conventional naval base.”
During the debate there were gasps when May said she would authorise a nuclear strike that could kill hundreds of thousands.
May, who was making her first appearance in the Commons as Prime Minister, was challenged by SNP MP George Kerevan to say if she would be “personally prepared to authorise a nuclear strike that could kill 100,000 innocent men, women and children?”
There was a brief pause, and then May simply replied: “Yes.”
The whole point of a nuclear deterrent, she added, was that our “enemies need to know that we would be prepared to use it”.
The decision of the Commons commits the government to the nuclear weapons programme and gives support to the plan to replacing the current Vanguard Class submarines with four Successor submarines.
Outlining the government’s case, May told MPs that the weapons were necessary to “send an unequivocal message to any adversary that the cost of an attack on our United Kingdom or our allies will always be far greater than anything it might hope to gain through such an attack.”
She added that only by having “our own independent deterrent”could the UK hope to do this.
“This government will never endanger the security of our people and we will never hide behind the protection provided by others, while claiming the mistaken virtue of unilateral disarmament.”
Robertson was given a standing ovation by his colleagues after a speech in which he criticised the government for forcing through one what will be its biggest spending commitment without giving MPs any indication of cost.
Despite his repeated invitations, the government front bench never did give him an answer.
Trident, Robertson said, was an “immoral, obscene and redundant weapons system” that had no place in Scotland, where it had been rejected by the people.
“If Scotland is a nation, and Scotland is a nation, it is not a normal situation for the state to totally disregard the wishes of the people, and this government has a democratic deficit in Scotland, and with today’s vote on Trident it’s going to get worse, not better.
“It will be for the Scottish people to determine whether we are properly protected in Europe and better represented by a government that we actually elect – at this rate, that day is fast approaching.
It was an odd and angry debate on the Labour benches, with the civil war that has engulfed that party dominating the exchanges between Jeremy Corbyn and his backbenchers.
Corbyn argued that the weapons would not actually deter any threats. “What is the threat we are facing that one million people’s deaths would actually deter?” he asked, adding that nuclear weapons did not stop Daesh, Saddam Hussein’s atrocities, war crimes in the Balkans or genocide in Rwanda.
Labour MP John Woodcock said his party had stood on a manifesto commitment to Trident renewal at the last General Election and now the leadership were voting against it.
The party’s position last night was split after the Labour whips gave MPs a free vote. The majority of Labour MPs voted for the renewal, the leader and close allies voted against, and the Foreign Office spokesperson Emily Thornberry urged her colleagues not to vote at all.
Woodcock said the free vote was a “terrible indictment of how far this once great party has fallen”.
“What Labour’s current front bench are doing is not principled. It shows contempt for the public, for party members and often in what they say for the truth,” he said.
In his speech Crispin Blunt, the Tory chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, made the argument that new technology would make Trident vulnerable to hacking and that renewal would be “the most egregious act of self-harm to our conventional defence”.
“This is a colossal investment in a weapons system that will become increasingly vulnerable and for whose security we will have to throw good money, after bad – in fact tens of billions of it more than already estimated – to try to keep it safe in the decades to come.”
SNP MP Brendan O’Hara, whose Argyll and Bute constituency includes Faslane, argued that the money spent on Trident could cause cuts in other areas of defence.
“What is the effect going to be on our conventional forces, can the secretary of state tell us where the axe will fall in order to secure Trident? Are the Type 26 frigates going to be delayed yet again, and their number further reduced? Is the Apache helicopter program at risk? Will the F35 be scaled back, or will the axe, once again, fall on our already hard-pressed service personnel?”
Mhairi Black said the SNP were against Trident, not out of some romantic ideal, but for “very logical reasons”.
“We have already established the fact that we would not fire this weapon first," she said. "The only time we are saying we will ever use this weapon is if somebody has a nuclear strike against us. And to be quite frank that means we are all dead anyway. And if I’m dying then I don’t care if we’re sending one back or not.”
The debate had been called by David Cameron in one of his last acts as Prime Minister. He was present in the chamber yesterday. He had called the debate partly to unify his party after the bruising referendum, but also to widen the cracks in Labour.
He will have been happy with proceedings yesterday, which is likely to have been the last time MPs debate and vote on Trident’s replacement.
Trident vote guarantees Scotland will chose independence, says Navy whistle-blower William McNeilly
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