LONDON (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko — Scotland is opposed to the Trident missile operational system as a joint venture between the United Kingdom and the United States making Scotland the first target of a potential strike, former leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) told Sputnik.
"In the event of nuclear war, Faslane would be a first strike target genocidally killing 40 percent of the Scottish population," Gordon Wilson said.
Wilson, who led the party from 1979 to 1990, emphasized Westminster's total dependence on Washington with regards to Trident's usage.
"The SNP has never got over the fact that British independent missiles cannot be fired without the consent of the US," Wilson told Sputnik.
Unveiling its manifesto on April 20, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon reiterated the party's calls to scrap Trident entirely, making it a hot-button issue ahead of Thursday's general election.
SNP and other opposition parties claim Trident will cost approximately 100 billion pounds, or $152 billion, against official estimates of one-fourth of that over the next three decades.
Current poll trackers pit the two major rivals — Labour and Conservatives — to win no more than one-third of the total votes, leading to projections of another hung parliament in the UK's last two election cycles.
The two most likely outcomes of Thursday's race are either the formation of a new coalition or a minority government. The latter is subject to a so-called confidence and supply agreement between SNP and Labour, short of a formal coalition which both parties firmly deny being open to.
SNP's quadrupling in membership to over 110,000 makes it the third largest party in the United Kingdom, surpassing the Liberal Democrats' 44,000 members.
