Logic and Reality

Tweet According to a report in the Sunday Times, a group of MPs have come up with a wizard wheeze to overcome the potential difficulty of relocating the Trident base should the people of Scotland vote yes in the independence referendum.  They have suggested that the base, at Faslane, should be redesignated as the sovereign territory of the RUK, and thus not part of Scotland at all.

This would not only mean that the SNP would achieve their aim of removing Trident from Scottish soil, it would also save the RUK from having to spend £20 billion or so on building a new alternative base.  (To say nothing, of course, about saving the blushes of Carwyn Nuke-Em Jones if his suggestion of moving the base to Milford Haven were to be resurrected.)

The MPs’ logic is impeccable, but somewhat dwarfed by the extent of their failure to understand or grasp political reality. 

It’s not clear whether they were proposing to simply ‘deduct’ Faslane from the rest of Scotland before ‘granting’ the rest of the country Independence, or whether they were proposing to negotiate this proposition.  I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that they were proposing the latter rather than some sort of post-colonial dictat, but it still leaves two rather obvious questions.

Firstly, do they really believe that the first act of a Scottish Government would be to cede control over part of their country to the RUK in order to avoid having to implement a clear and explicit promise?

And secondly, do they really believe that even a verbal wizard like Alex Salmond could get away with arguing that ceding Faslane to England amounts to implementation of his promise to remove Trident from Scottish soil?