The present UK government has repeatedly expressed its intention to maintain a nuclear weapons programme for the foreseeable future and it continues with its renewal programme.
In the period leading up to the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence [research showed] that a Scottish government that could control policies on defence and international relations could not only insist that the UK remove its nuclear weapons from Scotland, but also initiate the elimination of the Trident nuclear weapon system in the UK. When the world came together at the UN in 2017 to adopt the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, many Scots were heartbroken that an independent Scotland was not in a position to sign it.
The deep seated disregard for the UK government throughout Scotland (there has, for example, been a permanent peace camp on the grass verge opposite the entrance to the submarine base in continuous occupation since 1982. Along with the uncertainty over UK economics, constitutional problems created by Brexit, and the huge economic pressure on the government in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, creates a necessity and a culture where the UK government is more open than at any time since the dawn of the nuclear age to think the “unthinkable” and consider an alternative to such a patriarchal and imperialistic position of power.