AN independent Scotland could help spark a process of global nuclear disarmament, Ian Blackford has suggested.
The SNP Westminster leader, who said the Scottish Government is on track to hold a referendum next year, said the UK has had a “massive missed opportunity” to reduce the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme, he was asked about the SNP’s ambition to remove the Trident nuclear deterrent from the Clyde Naval Base amid fears Vladimir Putin could resort to nuclear weapons.
Blackford said: “You’ve got someone [Putin] that you don’t know if they’re prepared to press that button or not.
“There’s been a massive missed opportunity over the course of the last decades, because we should have been getting round the table with the Russians and others, and making sure that we were reducing the threat from nuclear weapons, reducing nuclear warheads.
“We’re in a very dangerous situation. The world is very unstable, we’re dealing with the situation in Ukraine.
“We need to make sure that we never, ever, ever are in a situation where anyone is prepared to use nuclear weapons, that threat of mass destruction that would take place.
“Having nuclear weapons isn’t a protection. Having nuclear weapons makes us a threat and we’ve had a long-standing position that having nuclear weapons on the Clyde is something that we cannot tolerate.”
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The MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said an independent Scotland would “present an opportunity” for other countries to begin to negotiate reductions in their own nuclear warheads.
“We’ve been asleep at the wheel and we haven’t tackled Russian aggression,” he added.
“We simple haven’t done what we should have done to make sure that we were dealing with that Russian threat and it’s the lack of ability of UK governments over a number of years that put us in the position that we’re now in.”
The Scottish Greens, who are in a co-operative agreement with the SNP at Holyrood, are opposed to Nato membership. Asked if his party is comfortable working alongside a party with such a stance, Blackford said the SNP’s position is “very clear – that we wish an independent Scotland to be a part of Nato”.
The SNP MP was also quizzed on the likelihood of a second independence referendum being held next year.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said she intends to hold a vote before the end of 2023, with the party campaigning for a referendum during the local government election campaign.
Blackford echoed this timeframe, stating the SNP and the Scottish Greens had a manifesto commitment of delivering a second vote in the 2021 Scottish Parliament elections.
He added: “This is a question for Boris Johnson and the Conservative government. Will they respect democracy, will they respect the rights of the Scots who sent MSPs to the Scottish Parliament with a mandate to deliver that independence referendum?”
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Blackford went on to dismiss suggestions that Sturgeon’s recent Covid rule breach was similar to the partygate scandal at Westminster.
The First Minister apologised and was spoken to by police last week after being filmed without a face mask on while in a hairdressers at a time when mandatory rules were still in force.
Blackford insisted no-one would equate the First Minister’s “momentary lapse” with a Prime Minister “that has repeatedly lied to the House of Commons, that broke his own laws, and has been found guilty has been fined by the police”.
He added: “I don't think anybody will see any equivalence between what has happened with Boris Johnson and what has happened with the First Minister because it's been a culture of partying which has taken place.
“It’s the real anger that people feel right across these islands, that people couldn't be with their loved ones. They couldn't be with them when they were dying in hospital. They couldn't visit them in care homes, couldn't have funerals. And yet, the Prime Minister in London was presiding over a regime where there wasn’t just one party, there were multi parties.”
The SNP Westminster leader concluded: “It’s about the moral leadership that we expect to see and the failure of the Prime Minister to recognise that he now no longer has that moral authority to lead.”
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