Salmond faces rebellion over Scotland remaining in Nato

For the SNP this is a moment worthy of capital letters; it is a Big Moment, even a ‘Clause 4 Moment’.

On Friday afternoon they’ll debate whether or not to drop their 30-year-old opposition to Nato membership for an independent Scotland. Alex Salmond could be facing the biggest internal rebellion of his leadership over the issue.

He wants to reassure the Scottish people that voting ‘Yes’ for independence in 2014 would not put their national defence at risk. Three quarters of Scots want to stay in Nato (YouGov poll).

But here’s the problem; SNP activists don’t like nuclear weapons and Nato is a nuclear alliance.

Now there are other non-nuclear states in Nato, but the particular circumstance in Scotland is that the UK’s nuclear deterrent is already based at Faslane. The weapons storage facility along the water at Coulport is considered almost impossible to replicate.

Could Scotland get rid of them AND join Nato? A document written by the MoD suggests not. If Scotland won’t allow the UK’s deterrent to stay, then Nato might not allow Scotland to join.

So unless SNP delegates can overcome their reluctance to accept a) Nato and b) nukes, then Alex Salmond’s task in persuading increasingly reluctant Scots of the benefits of independence becomes a little harder still.

And if they are not within Nato’s warm embrace, then the Scots could also find themselves having to build a new and extremely expensive defence infrastructure of their own.