By Keith Aitken in Edinburgh | 20 January 2012
The UK coalition’s defence cuts leave Scotland with ‘exactly the configuration’ it needs for its armed forces after independence, First Minister Alex Salmond has claimed.
Salmond set out his vision for a post-independence Scottish Defence Force for the first time in a BBC Scotland interview. He also reaffirmed the Scottish National Party’s long-standing commitment to a nuclear-free Scotland and the removal of the UK’s Trident nuclear submarine force from Faslane in the Firth of Clyde.
His comments provoked a scathing response on both sides of the Border. UK Defence Secretary Philip Hammond threatened Scotland with ‘a reckoning’ for the cost of dismantling Faslane, while Labour accused the SNP of hypocrisy for welcoming the consequences of a Defence Review that it had previously opposed.
The 2010 Defence Review scales back Scottish provision to around 6,500 home-based troops in three regiments – the Scots Guards, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards and the Royal Regiment of Scotland. It retains Royal Air Force Lossiemouth, while converting the Kinloss and Leuchars RAF bases to army use, and closing Edinburgh’s Redford and Dreghorn barracks.
Salmond said: ‘The configuration of the army in Scotland, the mobile brigade which is the outcome of the Defence Review, looks exactly like the configuration you’d want for a Scottish defence force – so that’s one naval base, one aircraft base and a mobile armed brigade.
‘The great argument in favour of having a Scottish defence force is twofold. One, you wouldn’t have to have the biggest concentration of nuclear weapons in Western Europe situated in Scotland, and secondly we’d have the right to decide whether or not to participate in international engagements.’
But Hammond dismissed as laughable the idea that Scotland could ‘break off a little bit’ of the UK forces for its own use. He said it would cost ‘billions of pounds’ over many years to replace Faslane.
‘Obviously the cost of doing that would be a factor that had to be taken into account in any reckoning on Scottish independence,’ Hammond said.
Hammond’s Labour counterpart, Jim Murphy, called Salmond’s analysis ‘bizarre’. Dunfermline Labour MP and defence select committee member Thomas Docherty said it was ‘complete hypocrisy’ on the part of the SNP, which had campaigned vigorously against the closure of the RAF bases.
