Iain is able to correctly identify that the submission that
@SNP_SITW group made to the UK #IntegratedReview - and therefore wasn’t policy about an independent Scotland - but that’s where his grip on reality ends.
We called for unilateral disarmament, as I pointed out on Monday:
https://t.co/DwHt9knqHh https://t.co/OdRfSXlaNM
Iain chooses to elide the fact that our submission was clearly not about policy in an independent Scotland, and therefore seeks to portray our request to the UK Government to be serious about its own commitments to multilateral arms control treaties — like the NPT — as SNP policy
Despite revealing that he knows a thing or two about internal SNP procedures, he then goes on to conflate two unconnected things — our submission, and a putative conference motion that the democratically-elected conferences committee (not the Leadership) decided not to accept
This just makes him look silly, because the First Minister expressed her support for the
@nuclearban *this week*, and the
@SNP_SITW submission expressed support for it *in the next paragraph* to the one MacWhirter objected to, but I guess he needs a hook for thefalsehoods. 👇
Now, there are good faith debates to be had about nuclear policy, & the efficacy of multilateral arms control, but we can’t escape one point: Scotland can only Unilaterally disarm once — what should our policy be then? Do we join North Korea and Israel in not signing the NPT?
There’s also a disingenuous dichotomy being presented between Unilateral and Multilateral disarmament: they are not mutually exclusive. I don’t think Vitamin D is going to stop me from getting Covid, but I still take it as a prophylactic.
Finally, Iain’s article is a perfect example of the anglo-centric worldview many of his generation have which holds, among other things, that everything
@theSNP does must be seen through the paradigm of New Labour. There is no ‘third way’ on nukes in the party
So, given all that, it’s hard to accept that he’s too lazy to have read the whole
@SNP_SITW submission; or that he doesn’t understand concepts around unilateral and multilateral disarmament; or of how decisions are made in a party he obviously has much knowledge and experience of
Instead, I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that this is a mendacious attempt to peddle falsehoods designed to divide supporters of independence and of
@theSNP. It’s sad that this is what has become of someone who I’d always enjoyed reading — but we can’t let this divide us.
I’ll try and not do make any more nuclear threads — I’ll soon have enough to knit masel a glow-in-the-dark jumper. If you want to know more, here’s a piece I wrote about how watering down our unilateral commitment just ain’t gonna happen
https://t.co/W4K8SnUcRM
