NICOLA Sturgeon vowed to protect “the stability and interests” of Scotland from the “devastating” economic implications of Brexit when she appeared in an intense round of interviews yesterday as an angry and worried nation faced the impact of Thursday’s seismic UK vote.

The First Minister sought to reassure people north of the Border saying she would take every possible action to safeguard the country’s wish to remain in the EU, including considering asking Holyrood to block the UK leaving.

In Scotland 62 per cent of people voted to stay in the EU, compared to the vote across the UK which saw 52 per cent opt to leave.

Plans for a second independence referendum are being drawn up as one likely course of action to keep Scotland in the EU.

Sturgeon stressed however, that the new vote would “not be a re-run of the 2014 referendum” as “circumstances have changed dramatically”.

The First Minister said: “The UK that Scotland voted to remain within in 2014 doesn’t exist any more and this is a case of how do we best protect the stability and the interests of Scotland.” She underlined she had a duty as First Minister to preserve Scotland’s membership and would not be doing her job if she did not act to stop Scotland being taken out against its will. “This is a situation not of our choosing. If we stand back and allow it to happen then the economic consequences, the social, the cultural, the consequences for our place in the world would be devastating. I have a duty to find a different path for the way forward,” she told the BBC’s Sunday Politics.

In a few days which have seen the resignation of David Cameron as Prime Minister, a coup against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and claims “there was no plan” for the days ahead, Sturgeon said she would ensure Scotland was “not leaderless”.

The turmoil caused by the Brexit victory hit home on Friday when the value of the pound plunged to a 30-year low and more than £50 billion was wiped off the share price of the UK’s largest companies. At one point London’s FTSE 100 index of top firms had lost £100bn as it plunged by seven per cent and there were fears the cost of mortgages would soar also intensified after agencies suggested they would downgrade the UK’s credit rating.

As the ugly fall out continued yesterday Conservative Baroness Warsi said immigrants and their descendants were being stopped in the street and ordered to leave Britain.

In a bid to calm Scots’ fears over Brexit Sturgeon – who was attacked on social media by Leave voters in England – said she would consider asking Holyrood to block the UK’s departure from Europe if MSPs are required to give formal backing.

“Of course, if the Scottish Parliament was judging this on the basis of what’s right for Scotland then the option of saying we’re not going to vote for something that is against Scotland’s interests, of course that is on the table,” she said when asked if she would consider asking the Holyrood not to back a motion for legislative consent.

She said she could imagine the “fury” such a move could spark in England, but added: “It is perhaps similar to the fury of many people in Scotland right now as we face the prospect of being taken out of the European Union against our will.”

She hit out as two new polls showed a majority in favour of Scotland leaving the UK. A Panelbase survey for the Sunday Times in Scotland found 52 per cent of those likely to vote would back independence; an online poll by ScotPulse for the Sunday Post put support at 59 per cent.


As far as the EU is concerned, Scotland is a stateless nation until independence

Comment: Andrew Tickell

NEGOTIATORS call it the big gun. The bottom line. If debate is exhausted, if all our alternatives have been canvassed, considered, debated and rejected, what do you do?

On Friday morning, on the steps of Bute House, Nicola Sturgeon stated her mission: to take “all possible steps and explore all options to give effect to how people in Scotland voted, to secure our continuing place in the EU.”

The First Minister has a range of alternatives before her, some promising, others less so, short of pulling the trigger on a second independence referendum. Each of these must be explored and exhausted, but few of them look like flying.

Some folk hold out the hope of a solution to reflect Scottish European ambitions, inspired by Greenland’s relationship with Denmark. Along with the Faroe Islands, the autonomous island nation is part of Kingdom of Denmark.

But while the mother country participates fully in the European Union, Greenland sits outside of its relationships, based on a common market, and the free movement of goods, capital and persons. Couldn’t we knock the Danish situation on its head? Couldn’t England and Wales crash out of the European Union, leaving Scotland, fully participating in its common market?

The augurs aren’t good. Firstly, the EU is an international organisation formed by its member states, and until it is independent, Scotland remains a stateless nation.

The Greenland wheeze would rely on the UK remaining an EU member state, advocating our interests, on behalf of five million Scots out of a British population of more than sixty million.

This is not viable. And if you seriously believe that a UK Government – sternly instructed to Brexit by the people of England – would remain even paper members of the EU for our sake, you’ll believe anything. With the best will in the world, it cannot and will not happen.

So perhaps the First Minister might try a solution, rooted in domestic law. On social media over the weekend, a number of excitable tweeters raised the idea that Holyrood might “veto” Brexit. If only it was so simple.

Under the Scotland Act, Holyrood must abide by EU law, respecting the rules of the single market. If MSPs violate EU law, their legislation can be flattened by the courts.

If Westminster wants to strip these requirements out of the devolution settlement, in principle, they would need Holyrood’s consent. The same goes for any attempt to fiddle with key EU powers which the devolution legislation broadly devolves – agriculture, fishing, the environment.

And MSPs may well decline to extend their consent to these interferences. They have done so in the past, returning Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reform to Westminster, with an instruction to abandon the parts of it extending to Scotland.

In those meeker political times, the former work and pensions secretary capitulated, deleting the offending sections of his Bill. But as spittle-flecked Brexiteers never cease of reminding us, Westminster remains sovereign in the British political system. Power devolved is power retained.

The First Minister may ask MSPs to refuse to give effect to the wishes of Boris Johnson and his colleagues. This may delay Brexit. It may make it more politically difficult.

It may ramp up the ongoing tensions between the focused, prepared government in Edinburgh, and the unfocused, clueless omnishambles which currently rules in Whitehall. But this is not a veto. Or at least, not a veto with legal and political teeth.

A Brexit majority in the UK parliament retains the legal power to any ignore any and every Scottish objection, ramming the changes through. Without independence, legally, we remain subject to the increasingly capricious whims of the Westminster majority, reliant on their goodwill. As the referendum result last week told us, this is now in short – very short – supply.

The ultimate lesson? There is only one reliable way for Scotland to “take back control” over our European relations. We won’t find it in the precincts of the Palace of Westminster.


Jim Sillars: Let’s not be naive, the political and legal basis for early indyref2 is not in place