Nicola Sturgeon has clashed with Tory grandee Lord Heseltine as she claimed the UK Government is obsessed with the Trident nuclear deterrent.
The First Minister, appearing on the BBC's Question Time, was asked whether the UK had sufficient defences in place on the day it emerged RAF jets had shadowed two Russian Bear bombers off Cornwall.
Ms Sturgeon, who wants to scrap Trident, said the Tory-Liberal Democrat Coalition administration had an "obsession" with the Clyde-based weapons which was entirely the "wrong priority".
Lord Heseltine, a former Defence Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, said the Nato alliance was "the most formidable defence alliance in human history."
He added there was not "the slightest risk of a nuclear confrontation with Russia because we have a nuclear deterrent". He said any attempt to leave France as Europe's sole nuclear power was reckless.
Ms Sturgeon suggested Labour would not win a landslide victory at May's General Election because "it doesn't offer an alternative" to the Tories austerity measures. The party's shadow energy and climate change secretary Caroline Flint said that was "ridiculous."
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