Scottish Labour and SNP MSPs voted together to scrap Trident, Scottish Labour needs to go do some soul searching, the majority of the people of Scotland want Trident renewal, its time some people who are Labour MSPs go and developed some backbone regarding how to defend a nation, and it isn’t done by appeasement

Dear All

Lord Kinnock is a former Labour Leader, his tenure was gaffe prone, and we all remember his famous stroll along the beach where he ended up falling over and getting wet. He was a bad leader but he never became a great leader, it could have been due to circumstance or bad plain bad luck.

Any country which seeks to defend itself from attack must be defended by a professional military; the British Armed Forces have a reputation for professionalism which stretches back centuries. They have won countless battle honours in every continent of the globe. Our highest decoration for valour is the Victoria Cross award for bravery above and beyond what could be expect by a British solider during time of conflict or war.

Defence of the realm is important, recognised as national security, we sleep in our beds at night because men stand ready to violence on our behalf if need be. Some of them in doing so will die to defend our way of life and our beliefs. Britain over the last two decades has lost some of its reputation mainly because of poor political judgment by some Prime Ministers.

Tony Blair did such damage to our international reputation by blindly following George W Bush. That damage didn’t just lose us trust aboard but also internally in Britain, people don’t trust politicians as they previously did, and they are right to do so.

The expenses scandal was a watershed moment in British politics. It did more than demonstrate that some people were corrupt, and we all remember the criminal trials which saw some people such as Labour MP Jim Devine in prison. His case interested me as he tried to use what he thought was a technically to evade justice in the courts. I blogged on that attempt on the blog, basically I said if the Bill of Rights was written in good faith then those who drew it up didn’t legalise criminality in the House of Commons.

Anyway, trust, trust is important in politics, then, now and in the future because although people have a passing interest in politics, they demand trust without question. The public expect certain things to be done even if it isn’t high on their radar; they expect it to be pro-active.

Defence is one such issue.

I am known for my pro NATO and pro Nuclear Faslane stance, nothing will ever make me change my mind on this issue, because British Soldiers lives are important to me, I am ex forces and also I trained up people for Sandhurst. Britain is one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, all members have nuclear weapons.

Our place on the world stage is internationally recognise by all, Britain was known for its quiet diplomacy in the modern era which is why the Commonwealth is so strong having primary emerging from what was then the British Empire.

During World War 2, Commonwealth forces came to our aid when the Nazis sought to conquer Europe and establish the Third Reich. We will always be in the debt for the sacrifices that were made by servicemen and women who fought on countless battlefields in Africa, Europe, and the Far East.

At the end of WW2, nuclear weapons were developed and dropped on two Japanese cities causing terrible devastation, a week later Japan surrendered and WW2 was over.

50 Million People’s lives were lost but from the ashes rose a new Europe determined that WW3 would not happen. The Nuclear age had arrived and it was here to stay, we cannot un-invent nuclear weapons, we cannot go back to a non nuclear age.

This is the bottom line and it shows why British voters will not back a party that supports unilateral nuclear disarmament. British voters know that weak Britain puts the lives of British solders in peril, Nuclear disarmament is a noble goal, but not at the expense of sons and daughters.

Scottish Labour and SNP MSPs voted together to scrap Trident.

This is the politics of the student union, were the damages caused by such an ill considered proposal will mean British dead. The theory of nuclear disarmament is that if we disarm, everyone else will not hurt us because we are nice!

Did ‘we are nice’, help the Ukrainians when they gave up their nuclear weapons and fell prey to Russian aggression?

The Labour Party is in flux, Jeremy Corbyn is pro nuclear disarmament, but the Labour Party needs to face reality, not attempt to live in a dream state, were everything is going their way. Westminster 2015 was a wake up call in Scotland for Labour, the voters turned on them, it wasn’t unexpected, and it was self inflicted.

People didn’t turn away from Labour because of their stance on Nuclear weapons, it isn’t high on their list, there is no angst there; people really have much more pressing problems in their lives.

But, they want and demand security, the details they leave to politicians with one condition, get it right!    

UK Labour abandoned unilateral nuclear disarmament in the late 1980s, they can’t go back to the 80’s, they can’t go back to hard left wing extremists, we can only go forward as a party of the centre who put people’s welfare first, public service in elected politician needs to comeback into fashion. Labour needs to take a real long hard look at itself.

Scottish Labour MSPs voted with Nicola Sturgeon’s Nationalists at Holyrood for a motion calling for Trident to be scrapped, if I was an MSP, I would not vote to scrap Trident. To show how this issue is such less than pressing problem, the debate was poorly attended at the start, it was said that 30 people turned up.

Neil Findlay MSP said Labour remains committed to membership of Nato "at the moment" and "at this stage". I think he will find that when it comes to getting elected that commitment to Nato and nuclear will firm up, reality bites, especially when their employment prospects can go to absolute zero!

Jackie Baillie, whose constituency includes the Faslane naval base rebelled against the party whip and supported its retention.

Good for her.

It has been suggested that the Labour Party would consult the Stop the War coalition before taking a view on military intervention in Syria.

So, what should the decision on Syria be?

First, Syria is a mess, and in part the West is responsible by allowing Islamic State to gain a foothold, we encouraged dissent on the back of the Arab Spring in a country we had no business interfering in. When the Americans saw that the Syrian people didn’t want a change of Government, they kind of wandered off, now they are wandering back. We have the legal government of Syria, the PKK, the YPG and the Islamic State all fighting, along with the West and Russians doing air strikes.

We should support military intervention in Syria, not against the legitimate government but against Islamic State.

What exactly does the Stop the War coalition know about warfare? Stupid people get innocent people killed, you are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. The longer the problem exists, the more people that will die; and the Islamic State crowd are a bunch of recreational killers, the videos of cutting off heads by Jihadi John show that. What would the Stop the War coalition want to do with IS, would they think ‘talking’ would work?

The time for talk is ended when hostages were murdered.

Syria became weak; and looked what happened.

The Scottish Parliament voted by a margin of 96 votes to 17 to scrap Trident and establish “defence diversification agencies” to find Faslane’s workers alternative employment.

96 MSPs voted the wrong way on Trident, the Scottish people, the majority want Trident renewal, Holyrood is seen as a lesser place when compared to Westminster, this type of student union pish is an example of how bad Scots have been badly let down.

A leader of a country must be ready to take a country to war if needed, knowing that people will die in combat, that decision must not be taken lightly, and the last thing we need in times of national emergency are appeasers of the Chamberlain mode.

There is ‘no peace in our time’; we just aren’t collectively as a nation seeing the horrors that are being committed on a daily basis. In WW2, weak countries went under very quickly; we can never afford to be weak. If Trident was scrapped there wouldn’t be a welfare bonanza much as the SNP would have you believe.

Labour should look back to its past to see how unelectable it became by signing up to dump nuclear weapons.

No way back, only forward, we keep the peace on the world stage by being strong!

Lord Kinnock is a former Labour Leader gets it, everyone needs to get the same mindset, we live in a global world now were threats are ever present.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University