On Monday, UK parliamentarians in the House of Commons voted in favor of renewing the United Kingdom’s nuclear deterrent program with four new Vanguard-class nuclear submarines. Fifty-eight of Scotland’s 59 members of parliament voted against the decision to deploy another generation of nuclear weapons at the Clyde naval base.
"The SNP does not believe there's any use for nuclear weapons in the world and would like to see them completely eradicated. The key to having influence is to lead by not having them — leading by example rather than hoping for some multi-lateral disarmament. There are only eight countries with nuclear weapons, out of a global community of around 200. It is simply not the norm to want to possess weapons that, if fired, will kill millions of innocent people," Chapman said.
"It would also take some time to reconfigure the Trident nuclear base as a conventional HQ for a Scottish Navy in an independent Scotland," the lawmaker added.
The Trident system is deployed at the UK Royal Navy’s Faslane submarine base in Scotland. The UK Conservative Party has been campaigning to renew the nuclear deterrent despite rising maintenance costs.
The total estimated cost of renewing Trident is 167 billion pounds ($244 billion) over the 32-year lifespan of the system, between 2028 and 2060, according to the International Monetary Fund.
