NICOLA Sturgeon is to delay setting out the “next steps” of an independence referendum until after the snap General Election in June.
Back in March, the First Minister had indicated she would make a statement in Holyrood about what her options for holding an independence referendum would be once the UK government had denied the parliament’s request for a Section 30 order.
Those plans were seemingly scuppered when Theresa May announced a surprise snap election last week.
Now the SNP leader’s spokesman said the unveiling of those “next steps” will come out after the June 8 vote.
At a post-Cabinet briefing, Sturgeon’s spokesman said: “Early thinking had been to come back to parliament after the local election. But there’s another election now, so we are looking to the other side of the General Election to come back to that.”
It comes as a Kantar poll suggested support for Scottish independence had fallen to its lowest level since the 2014 referendum.
The pollsters suggested support for a yes vote was at 40 percent among Scottish voters, with 60 percent supporting remaining part of the UK.
John Curtice took to Twitter to say the poll, which was carried out before May’s announcement, “could be chance variation” as three others on independence before it had shown little change.
BMG had the difference between yes and no at 2 per cent, rather than Kantar’s 20 points.
In datasets released later, excluding Don’t Knows, 49 per cent of respondents chose one of the four pro-referendum options provided by TNS, and 51 per cent chose the sole anti-referendum option, which, according to Scot Goes Pop blogger James Kelly is “is strikingly similar to the findings of recent Panelbase polls which have also shown voters split down the middle.”
Meanwhile, Labour made their big Brexit campaign pledge yesterday, promising that a government under Jeremy Corbyn would give guarantees to protect the rights of EU citizens living in the UK.
Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer also vowed a “radical extension of devolution” powers transferred back from Brussels going straight to the relevant devolved body.
He also promised to repeal the Great Repeal Bill before it had the opportunity to start repealing.
However, there was little else markedly different from the Conservatives offer.
Labour supports leaving the single market and wants to end free movement of people.
Starmer said: “A Labour approach to Brexit means legislating to guarantee that parliament has a truly meaningful vote on the final Brexit deal.”
The SNP said Labour had given the Tories a “blank cheque” on Brexit.
Stephen Gethins, the party’s Europe spokesperson said Labour were “weak and divided”.
“The mixed messages from them on Europe is clearly one of the reasons the Tories have been allowed to get away with their disastrous hard Brexit,” he added.
In Wales, Theresa May told activists not to be complacent, and not to trust the polls: “Remember the opinion polls were wrong in the 2015 general election, they were wrong in the referendum, and Jeremy Corbyn himself has said that he was a 200-1 outsider for the Labour leadership in 2015 and look where that got him.”
Her visit to Bridgend came as an opinion poll gave the Tories a shock lead over Labour in Wales, prompting speculation that Labour may face not being the largest party there for the first time since 1922.
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