Boris Johnson has “no moral authority” to impose a vast increases in the Britain’s nuclear arsenal on Scotland, Ian Blackford has claimed.
The SNP Westminster leader launched an angry pre-election attack on Johnson’s plans to almost double the number of Trident warheads in the UK deterrent from 180 to 260 under the controversial Defence and Foreign Policy review.
The decision to go for a 40 per cent increase in missiles, which will be based on nuclear submarines operating out of the Royal Navy Faslane base on the Clyde, have been described as an “abhorrent” decision by the SNP.
Blackford rammed home Scottish CND’s ‘bairns not bombs’ message in a virtual contribution to PMQs on Wednesday.
He said: “We have a UK Government that has to be shamed to providing free school meals, that will clap for nurses but won’t give them a fair wage and pumps billions into a nuclear arsenal that sets redundant, on the Clyde.
“Does the Prime Minister understand that the Scottish people are best served with the government that lives up to their values, a government that prioritises bairns not bombs?”
Johnson said that was Scottish children deserve was a government that tacked the problems of education.
He immediately tore into the SNP’s “addiction to constitutional change”.
Johnson said: “They seem determined, in the middle of a pandemic when the country is trying to move forward together, and obsessed with nothing else than breaking up the country in a reckless referendum.”
Blackford hit back: “Our children have a right to a future the that no longer lives under the shadow of these weapons of mass destruction.
"Every single one of these weapons will be based on the Clyde. So can the Prime Minister tell us exactly when the Scottish people give him the moral or democratic authority to impose these weapons of mass destruction on our soil in Scotland?”
Johnson said he was “very proud” of the government’s record on investing record sums in defence “including maintaining our nuclear defence which is absolutely vital for our long term security and helping to drive jobs, not just in in Scotland, but across the whole of the UK.”
