Scottish Government hosts anti-Trident summit

The Scottish Government is hosting an anti-Trident summit in Glasgow today. Ahead of the meeting, Alex Salmond has written to the the signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty seeking observer status at their meetings.

Although Trident is a reserved issue, Iain McWhirter argues that his hand is stronger than it may appear:

It’s actually very difficult to argue a coherent
case against Scotland having a presence at international disarmament
talks, since Scotland has had the dubious honour of hosting Britain’s
nuclear deterrent for 40 years. In June, a majority of MSPs in the
Scottish Parliament voted against Trident renewal, as did a majority of
Scottish MPs in Westminster in March.

But David Cairns, the Scotland Office minister, says that Alex
Salmond should be sorting out
the free personal care instead of "cavorting across the world stage
with his discredited loony-left
policies" and giving comfort to our enemies. Well, they are also his
loony policies, since Labour is still formally committed to pursuing
"multilateral nuclear disarmament" under a defence policy which dates
from the late 1980s.

If he is saying that the presence of an anti-nuclear Scottish
Government representative at the NNPT talks might be an embarrassment,
then fair enough. But Britain has every cause to be embarrassed, since
we’ve driven a coach and horses through the NNPT by renewing the
Trident
missile system. Article VI of the NNPT requires signatory nations to
work toward "cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to
nuclear disarmament". (The Herald)