The media this week, particularly in Scotland, has been ablaze with claims from – not one, not two, but three – members of Starmer’s cabinet that the elected government in Scotland is a “threat to national security”, due to its position on Labour’s militarism.
Such statements were said by defence secretary John Healey in the House of Commons on Monday, again by Scotland secretary Douglas Alexander, and yet again by Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy.
Lammy’s remarks came across as particularly patronising. Attempting to calm the situation, the Tottenham Labour MP tried to clarify that his pals’ comments were not aimed at ordinary Scots, but at their leaders.
Then, attempting to address concerns that he was perhaps not in a position – from his London constituency – to speak on behalf of Scottish people, Lammy stated that he is actually 5 percent Scottish!
‘I took a DNA test a few years ago … I’m 5% Scot!’
David Lammy defends Labour attacks on the Scottish Government by bringing up his own heritage pic.twitter.com/pYHBqgfr8X
— The National (@ScotNational) November 5, 2025
For anyone not deluded by their recent 23andMe results, it is clear that claims by Westminster politicians that the Holyrood government is a “threat to national security” are an absolute insult to devolution and to Scots.
This is also a completely baseless claim. Defence is a reserved power of the UK government. Holyrood therefore has no say in defence spending, nuclear ‘deterrents’ like Trident, or any matters of national security.
Smears
The root of these charges – falsely propagated by senior Labour figures around Starmer – appears to be the supposed opposition of the Scottish National Party (SNP) to Westminster’s militarist mania.
The evidence provided mainly constitutes the SNP’s resistance to publicly-funding arms production tied to the genocidal Israeli regime, alongside the party’s traditional opposition to nuclear weapons.
Furthermore, absurd suggestions have been thrown around that Putin and Xi, the Russian and Chinese presidents, would welcome a new SNP government in next year’s Holyrood elections, because this would weaken the UK’s national security!
These are nothing but smears, launched by Starmer’s cronies against anyone who utters one word of opposition to their beating of the war drum.
Militarism
It must be said, however, that these comments actually paint the SNP as being much more anti-war than they really are – no doubt leaving Scottish First Minister John Swinney and his supporters rubbing their hands with glee when the cameras are off.
In fact, the SNP do support war and militarism, albeit in a less jingoistic and crazed manner than their Westminster counterparts (although this is not saying much).
In reversing the party’s position on NATO membership, the SNP have also reversed any real opposition to the UK’s Trident nuclear weapons system, and to hikes in military spending to 5 percent of the country’s GDP – both of which are conditions of NATO membership.
Furthermore, the SNP leaders have continuously sidled up to the big boys of western imperialism: hosting secret meetings with Israeli ambassadors; whipping up hysteria around Putin’s Russia, in order to justify support for NATO militarism; and hosting US President Donald Trump during his humiliating visit to Scotland earlier this year.
Capitalism
‘Your Party’ co-founder Zarah Sultana has correctly pointed out that NATO is an “imperialist war machine”, which the working class across Britain should have no interest in being a part of.
For this, the left-wing MP has been slammed even more harshly than the SNP – accused of repeating Kremlin talking points. But these smears won’t stick for class-conscious workers and youth, as Sultana is absolutely correct.
What Sultana and other such left reformists do not explain, however, is what drives imperialism and its institutions: the capitalists’ endless pursuit of profits, markets, resources, and spheres of influence.
Ultimately, the SNP’s position regarding NATO expresses a necessity for a capitalist Scotland.
If independence were gained, Scotland would be much like any other small European nation. That is to say, an ‘independent’ Scotland – just as Britain is already – would be another subordinate lapdog to US imperialism.
Anyone in Scotland who is serious about opposing war and militarism, therefore, needs to not only fight against western imperialism and its representatives in Westminster and Washington, but the capitalist system also: the system that breeds conflict and chaos globally.
Only a Scottish Workers’ Republic, as part of a Socialist World Federation, can bring about a real end to the NATO war machine, to imperialism, and to all the horrors, barbarism, and misery of capitalism.
