Meeting of the Parliament 04 March 2025
We are honoured to be joined today, in the public gallery, by the consul of Ukraine in Edinburgh. [Applause.]
For more than a century, the United Kingdom and the United States have been the strongest of friends and allies, our bonds forged by shared values of freedom and democracy. During the first and second world wars, we fought alongside other allies to defeat fascism. In the cold war, our unity and resolve prevented the very real threat of a third world war and defeated the tyranny of the Soviet Union.
Today, however, the old alliances that have endured throughout our lifetimes do not seem as certain. Last week’s disturbing public disagreement between the Presidents of the United States and Ukraine feels seismic. For the sake of the heroic people of Ukraine, who are suffering slaughter at Putin’s hands, politicians in this country should recognise the responsibility that we have. It is critically important that we do whatever we can to repair, rather than exacerbate, those rifts. Grandstanding comments such as those from some senior Scottish National Party politicians are self-indulgent and counterproductive. They risk sowing divisions between western allies, to the delight of the Kremlin and other despotic and dangerous regimes.
Today, the First Minister rightly points out that Russia wants a fragmented west. We have seen Russia’s interference in Scottish politics and across Europe, so, when John Swinney suggested that President Trump’s state visit should be cancelled, how did he think that that would help fragile western unity? Today, he says that the visit should be conditional on the US sustaining
“the steadfast support of Ukraine, her independence and her territorial integrity.”
Does the First Minister really believe that he has the power to lay down conditions on the US, lacking any meaningful detail, and effectively expect the King to heed his terms?
Finally, I ask John Swinney about his comments that our nuclear deterrent provides
“no tangible or realistic benefit”
and that nuclear weapons
“are not stopping conflict in the world today”.
John Swinney is dangerously and naively wrong. Ukraine bitterly regrets forfeiting its nuclear deterrent and, during the cold war, it would have been immense folly to surrender our nuclear deterrent. With Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Europe and NATO no longer certain of what American future support might look like, that is even more true today. Does John Swinney recognise that, in these serious times, the SNP’s stance on nuclear weapons is not a serious policy?