The Nats" nuclear hypocrisy is laid bare as Davidson attacks their Nato plans With their commanding majority in the Scottish Parliament, there was no doubt that the SNP would win the vote last night but it was a hollow victory for the simple reason that try as they might, their ministers and MSPs could not reconcile their opposition to Trident and nuclear weapons in general with their wholly opportunistic decision to join Nato if they succeed in taking Scotland out of the UK. Ms Davidson described their opposition to nuclear weapons, but at the same time seeking to "shelter under the Nato nuclear umbrella" as "muddled, confused, cynical and posturing." This brought the ludicrous response from Keith Brown, a former Royal Marine, and now the SNP veterans" minister, that they didn't want to shelter under a nuclear umbrella but rather to get rid of nuclear weapons. Fine. But Nato is a first-use nuclear alliance. There is no possibility of the US getting rid of their nukes, nor of the French abandoning theirs and, even if the Lib Dems don't particularly like Trident they're not anti-nuclear, making it virtually certain the UK, with or without Scotland, will keep theirs. So, if the Nats don't like nukes, they shouldn't join Nato. But they say they want to join, not because, as Ms Davidson pointed out, they want to champion Nato, nor because of a commitment to the UK's allies? Nor was it because they believed in international cooperation to keep Europe safe? "No - it's to win the referendum," she said, adding that opinion polls suggested that 75 per cent of voters backed Nato membership. There were some ludicrous interventions from SNP backbenchers - Bruce Crawford and Alasdair Allan come to mind - but none accepted that the nuclear arsenal of the West, including Britain's, helped face down the Soviet threat and end the Cold War. To be fair, several moral arguments were advanced against nukes, most notably that of Jean Urquhart, who resigned from the SNP over its decision to join Nato, and from Marco Biagi. But it was the money-grubbing nature of the Nats" objection to nuclear weapons that saw Ms Davidson's best passage, when she said that there appeared to be no end to the projects that the SNP claim they'd spend the £163 million - Scotland's contribution to Trident - on. Different nationalists, of varying degrees of seniority, had said at different times that they'd spend the money on, variously, conventional armed forces, welfare, youth unemployment, conflict resolution, tackling inequality, shovel-ready construction projects, job creation, health, school building. Best of all, perhaps, was her refusal, to loud cheers even from the Labour benches, to permit Alex Salmond to intervene in her speech. This was the parliamentary equivalent of lese-majesty and was wondrous to see. The Tory leader added that the Nats "see Scotland's defence contribution as a cash cow that they can milk in every debate, every interview, every newspaper article to plug holes in their fantasy economics - spending that money many times over." Jackie Baillie, for Labour, repeated the question that the SNP consistently refuse to answer - which is how they'd maintain the 8,000 jobs at the Faslane naval base on the Clyde when it was denuded of submarines. The answer, as everyone knows, they can't. But they'll never admit it.