FIRST Minister Jack McConnell can’t win. If he speaks about important moral issues like nuclear defence, he is attacked for getting above himself. If he avoids the issue, on the grounds that defence is not a responsibility of the Scottish parliament, he is accused of moral cowardice.

Well, increasingly on issues such as asylum, immigration and Trident, Jack McConnell is prepared to speak out, and I think he should be congratulated for that – even by people who disagree with what he has to say. Last week he started a serious debate about the role of nuclear weapons in the age of global terrorism, addressing the concerns of the church leaders whose “long march for peace” arrived in Glasgow yesterday.

The FM, who was a unilateral nuclear disarmer in the 1980s, said that he now believes Trident should be used constructively in multilateral negotiations with countries such as Iran who are trying to get into the nuclear club.

McConnell was accused of “stupidity” by his Westminster colleagues for daring to discuss the uses of Trident at First Minister’s Question Time. How naive! How presumptuous! How dare this ridiculous little man intrude on these matters which are none of his concern?

An anonymous official in the Foreign Office was quoted as saying that the idea of using Britain’s nuclear deterrent as a bargaining chip in arms talks was “completely ridiculous”, and that the policy of the British government was to put pressure on Iran, not do some kind of deal with the country.

But the idea certainly isn’t stupid or ridiculous – and it is still the policy of the British Labour Party to use nuclear weapons in multilateral negotiations on arms reduction. Or at any rate, this formula, which replaced the old unilateralism of the 1980s, has never been formally revoked by Labour. That these multilateral deals were intended to be with countries which already possessed nuclear weapons, rather than ones like Iran trying to acquire them, shouldn’t matter – the principle is essentially the same.

This policy is certainly worth looking at – indeed, the chancellor has already looked at it. We know this because Gordon Brown had a number of in-depth conversations on the matter with the late Robin Cook before the former Labour foreign secretary’s sudden death last year. Brown spoke movingly at Cook’s funeral, and it was widely believed that, had Cook lived, he would have had a place in Brown’s Cabinet.

In his final years, Cook became a dedicated advocate of phasing out Trident. Moreover, he believed Britain could become a moral force by virtue of the manner in which we disarmed. Trident is an expensive anachronism, a deterrent which no longer deters, totally unsuited to the challenges faced by international terrorism. You can’t launch multiple-warhead nuclear missiles, designed to destroy cities, at al-Qaeda or the Taliban. It would mean blowing up Pakistan as collateral damage.

As it is, the Vanguard submarines based at Faslane go out on ocean jollies where they cruise around a bit and come home when they get bored. They can’t take part in exercises or war games because there is no known military contingency for which they could exercise. The missiles are no longer targeted anywhere, because Vladimir Putin wouldn’t like the idea that finger trouble could obliterate Moscow, St Petersburg and Tashkent in about 40 minutes. The idea of renewing this system at a cost of £30 billion is an offence against reason.

The only justification for keeping such a weapon, at least in Cook’s eyes, was to use it in arms decommissioning talks, rather like those which ended the war in Northern Ireland. This might seem fanciful, but nuclear arms reduction is not impossible. South Africa gave up its nuclear weapons after the fall of apartheid. Ukraine did the same after the fall of communism. And Argentina and Brazil dropped their nuclear programmes after negotiating a non-nuclear pact.

It’s not inconceivable that there could be a similar pact between Russia and China, and between India and Pakistan. But it takes someone to get the ball rolling, to show the world that the West really is serious about eliminating nuclear weapons from the world.

In the age of climate change and global warming, the last thing the world needs is further proliferation of nuclear weapons. Yet in the present stand-off between the Muslim world and the West – when even the Pope can provoke the wrath of Islam – there is a terrible danger of this clash of civilisations going nuclear.

Following the disastrous invasions of Iraq and Lebanon, a nightmare vision emerges of an Islamic bomb facing a Christian bomb. Iran is determined to acquire nuclear weapons, arguing, not unreasonably, that it is surrounded by nations that already have them – India, Pakistan, Israel. If the logic of deterrence applies to us, then it applies equally to them.

It is hypocrisy for the West to lecture Iran on non-proliferation and threaten invasion, when the US and Britain are developing their own new generation of nuclear weapons and making no effort to dispose of existing ones. We are in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls on nations to dismantle their nuclear arsenals. This hypocrisy is clear to the entire Arab world, and it will make their determination to acquire nuclear weapons all the greater.

Brown, of course, is now committed to the renewal of Trident. But he could use this an as opportunity to downsize our nuclear deterrent, to make it compatible with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If he did this as part of negotiations with the Muslim world, he could make a huge impression on history.

Only if we address this moral question of nuclear equity does disarmament in the Middle East become a possibility. In a few years, it may be too late.

It might be wishful thinking, but I suspect Brown – like McConnell – may be thinking right now about whether it would be possible to use the nuclear deterrent constructively, as some sort of bargaining tool which could persuade so-called rogue nations to put their own arsenals beyond use. It worked in Northern Ireland.

There’s some evidence that the chiefs of staff would not be unhappy at the prospect of saving the 4% of the military budget which goes on Trident. They could use it to buy something more useful – like decent boots and rifles or armoured cars for Afghanistan.

Brown has already shown his concern for world peace and the alleviation of poverty. He is one of the few politicians who can speak on equal terms with the IMF and the wretched of the earth. Perhaps he should listen to the McConnell doctrine. It’s surely worth a shot.

Read more from Iain Macwhirter at Comment is free