Sir Keir Starmer has this week urged President Trump to reverse his decision to cut off aid to and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. In Scotland, the governing party backs this case call – and many are on side with the Prime Minister too over his pledge to increase defence spending. In fact, there is an appetite to go further.
My good friend Ian Blackford has been making headlines recently after penning an article in the Scottish Times in which he urged Scotland’s governing party, the SNP, to rethink its stance on Trident. Such were the geopolitical changes taking place, Blackford says, that the party’s decades old position of unilateral nuclear disarmament was no longer fit for purpose and a multilateral position should be adopted instead. Given today’s world, this would essentially mean the party accepting the presence of nuclear weapons on the Clyde for some time to come.
There is a recognition at the most senior levels of the party that the SNP needs to shed its nervousness on defence.
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