The Defence Secretary has called the Scottish National Party’s support for unilateral nuclear disarmament a white flag policy and said the party must explain how it would square that with membership of a nuclear alliance, according to remarks made to reporters in Glasgow.
Wes Streeting was asked about the First Minister’s repeated claim that the government in Westminster is leaving Scotland short of defence.
He said: “We’ve got HMS Prince of Wales currently out on a major exercise now, so I think it’s very visible proof that what the First Minister said is both irresponsible and unfounded. I don’t think the SNP should be playing party politics with national defence and security. We’d much rather work with us.
“In terms of the risk of leaving the UK with insufficient defence, one of the biggest risks facing that security is the SNP’s position on unilateral nuclear disarmament. It is by far and away the most important deterrent that we have, and it’s not just the UK’s deterrent, it’s NATO’s deterrent. So any time the SNP says that a separate Scotland can be a NATO member, they have to first explain how their white flag policy on unilateral nuclear disarmament would work under a nuclear alliance.”
The question has followed the party since 2012, when its conference voted by a narrow margin to drop opposition to NATO membership while keeping opposition to nuclear weapons, a position that would require an independent Scotland to join an alliance whose strategic concept rests on nuclear deterrence while removing the British deterrent from Faslane and Coulport.
Every member of NATO except France takes part in the alliance’s Nuclear Planning Group, and the three countries that joined most recently signed up to a strategic concept describing nuclear weapons as the supreme guarantee of allied security. New members are admitted by unanimous agreement of the existing ones.
