CAN a UK prime minister launch a nuclear missile anyway? The current debate over the use of nuclear missiles by a UK government is based on a false premise. The possibility of their independent use no longer exists, I suspect since the replacement of Polaris by Trident in the early 1980s.

A British nuclear missile can only be launched by a signal from a US satellite. This was explained by Tony Benn in the “Bill and Benn” section of a showing of Andrew Neil’s This Week in the early 2000s. William Hague (“Bill”) did not demur. Not only are the missiles supplied by the US; the warheads are now serviced at Aldermaston by the US company Lockheed.

The only show of British independence known to me was earlier, in the threat of nuclear attack against Argentina during the Falklands crisis in 1982, relayed by an influential Conservative MP during a showing of Brian Walden’s Sunday lunchtime programme.

An illustration of the working of the relationship with the US in such matters is provided by the Iraq war, during which the UK launched submarine-borne cruise missiles purchased from the US.
G Howie
Address supplied

I WATCHED the Leaders’ Debate and listened as members of the audience grilled Jeremy Corbyn over nuclear weapons, asking if he would “press the red button”. He was absurdly challenged on what he would do if North Korea or Iran attacked Britain with a nuclear weapon. Strangely they never asked Theresa May the same questions. What, I wonder, would she have answered, and what would her answer have told us about her, a vicar’s daughter?

Britain claims to be a Christian country and from what I read all the Christian denominations in the country are opposed to nuclear weapons. I would be surprised to hear a practising Christian say that they would be prepared to “press the button” thus condemning hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians to death. I would also be surprised that they would support someone else to do it for them.

Yet, as one young girl in the TV audience remarked, “Why do so many people in this room want to kill millions of people?”It thus begs the question - if a principal qualification to be prime minister, for so many voters, is a willingness to set off a nuclear weapon towards another country, can a Christian ever be our PM?
Nick Dekker
Cumbernauld

WHAT a state (UK) we are in. Listening to the wild-eyed, frothing-at-the-mouth nuclear bampots on the BBC Question Time leaders special only served to increase my desire to be permanently parted from them.

What a nauseating picture they presented of a people so blinded to the reality of nuclear war that they were cheerleading for the immolation of millions of other innocent people should we be attacked by such weapons. Rather than see the futility that nuclear war represents and the failure of countries to properly communicate, they were hell-bent on making sure that their macho position was reflected in their choice of leader. What they want is a psychopathic leader who will not hesitate to rain down nuclear annihilation on their enemy regardless of the consequences.

Attempting to debate rationally with such a mindset is futile.

This vocal minority in the studio sadly represented the rising number in the wider community of the ignorant and the bigoted who have allowed the one-dimensional Theresa May and her egregious Tory cohort to twist the leaving of the EU into an attack on immigrants and granted them carte blanche to attack the weak and helpless in society while calling it “strong and stable government”.
James Mills
Johnstone

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Voters are totally sick of hearing parroted slogans

SPEAKING as a PR practitioner, I found your article on the letters from Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling interesting (Brown and Darling back together for ‘desperate’ letter plea, The National, June 3). However, you have to wonder at the competence of the author (I use the singular advisedly) of these letters and the special advisers who have convinced gullible folk like Darling, Brown, Dugdale, Davidson that tedious, robotic and repetitive use of slogans and mantras such as “divisive referendum”, “the day job” and “strong and stable” is the way to capture (and hold) the attention of the public.

My own feeling is that after the tenth reading of these mantras, boredom sets in along with the impression that these folk and others who repeat them are too idle and lacking in creativity ability to write their own messages, but make excellent parrots.
Douglas Turner
Edinburgh

GORDON Brown and Alistair Darling shared power in a Labour government for 13 years that left almost all of the Thatcher-era anti-trade union legislation untouched.

Gordon Brown, the chancellor who introduced a back-door tax on company pension funds that saw almost every one of them wound up in favour of personal pension plans that provide enormous benefits for multinationals in the financial market.

Alistair Darling, the chancellor who addressed a Tory Party conference and found time to sign off a generous personal pension for the CEO of RBS at three o’clock in the morning when the banks had no money to open for business at nine, yet made no provision for the tens of thousands who were to lose their jobs as a result of the banking collapse.

With such a track record behind the writers of this letter, could it possibly be sent to another 100,000 voters in marginal seats where only the Tories can defeat the SNP?
John Jamieson
South Queensferry

 

HENRY McLeish needs finally to resolve his political trauma (What is the point of voting Tory in Scotland?, The National, June 3). Go for straight independence.

We are treated every other month to his wriggling and writhing over issues that have a simple solution. The Westminster Question! Not the Tories, or whatever else!

The Westminster Incorporating Union of 1707. Contrary to all sweet musings, it was not a union, it was an incorporation. We were taken into the English political system! Hence the word “Anglo-” when referring to “UK” treatise and foreign relationships.

People are Anglophone when friends of Britain! Words convey the underlying realities! Simply come out of denial, Henry McLeish!

Quite simply, Henry McLeish needs to make a choice. If not independence and full equality with other countries for Scotland, then he must accept that by supporting the Westminster settlement, even with full fiscal powers and responsibilities, he is accepting a subservient status for Scots.

That is a hard fact! The Vow brought nothing, Dugdale is even supporting vote Tory to hit the SNP and your own party, Mr McLeish, even now is allying with the Tories in some local authorities.

Dugdale even denies a democratic right to determine Scotland’s future to uphold a Union that is toxic and will become even more so if the nastiest party remains in Number 10 Downing Street.

So, Henry McLeish, you can end your self-imposed misery. Just accept Labour for Indyref2 and back independence. You know deep down it makes sense!
John Edgar
Blackford

I CANNOT understand the logic of placing under-trained teachers in the “most difficult schools”

in Scotland (Ministers look at ‘fast-track’ plan for teaching crisis, The National, June 3).

I appreciate the concern of the EIS union that schemes such as Teach First undermine the profession, but given the current teacher shortage it seems reasonable to explore whether they may have a place in Scottish education.

However, I fail to see how “top graduates” will have the necessary skills to control pupils in these particularly challenging settings.
Joan Brown
Edinburgh