NICOLA Sturgeon heaped pressure on a divided Scottish Labour yesterday when she appealed for a “coming together” of political parties to back a second independence referendum.
The First Minister is planning to publish the “detailed democratic case” this week for powers to be given to the Scottish Parliament to hold another vote on the issue ahead of asking the Prime Minister for Holyrood to be given those powers.
In recent days, senior figures in Scottish Labour have said another referendum should be allowed to take place, including Cosla president Alison Evison and the party’s health spokeswoman Monica Lennon.
They spoke out following a disastrous election for Scottish Labour leaving the party with a single MP. However, other senior Scottish Labour politicians hit back publicly to say they are still opposed to a second independence vote.
In a statement to the Scottish Parliament on the General Election outcome when the SNP won 48 out of Scotland’s 59 seats, while the Scottish Tories lost seven of their 13 MPs, the First Minister referred to the shift taking place among some in Labour.
“There are already some signs that those who previously opposed an independence referendum, when faced with the democratic reality of Thursday’s result, are now rethinking that position,” she said.
“There is a growing cross-party recognition that election mandates should be honoured, that there has been a material change of circumstances and that the question of independence must be decided by the people and not by politicians.
“Given the nature of what we are facing in terms of UK governance, this is now a matter of some urgency – which is why this Government wants people to have a choice next year.”
The First Minister said there was a similar “coming together” in Scotland before the establishment of the Scottish Parliament.
She said: “Back in the early 1990s, when Scotland was also facing the prospect of a fourth Tory Government with no mandate here, there was a coming together of political parties, communities and civic Scotland. That resulted in the establishment of this parliament. It has achieved much.
“But a new, Brexit-focused Tory Government presents risks that few would have predicted at the dawn of devolution.
“So I hope in the coming days and weeks we will see a similar coming together around the idea of Scotland’s right to choose a better future.”
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And later in the debate Sturgeon made a direct appeal to Labour’s Alex Rowley who had asked whether her focus should be on “getting to the table” where the negotiations on a UK/EU trade deal are taking place in order to best protect Scotland’s interests.
“I have great respect for Alex Rowley’s position on some of these matters, but there will come a point at which Labour will have to decide whether it wants to be always trying to mitigate what the Tories do to Scotland and always accepting second best,” she said.
“Labour will have to decide whether its role in politics is to mitigate what Tory Governments do to Scotland or whether it has a bigger role to play in an independent Scotland in which we can have positive debates about the fairer and more prosperous country that I believe that, working together, we would be able to build.”
I never supported a Scottish Parliament just so we could mitigate the worst impacts of a Conservative government at Westminster
Sturgeon said the Scottish Government will host meetings of representatives from “civic society, trade unions and the business community, religious and minority groups and ... local government”
They will be designed to help the Government counteract what it sees as being the negative effects of the UK Government, including child poverty, climate change and the status of the NHS in future trade deals. Similar meetings were held by the Scottish Government following the vote to leave the European Union in 2016.
Underlining the Tories’s UK wide victory, Scottish Conservative interim leader Jackson Carlaw said: “What this election has confirmed beyond doubt or debate is that the whole of the United Kingdom together will be leaving the European Union at the end of next month.”
Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard called for Holyrood to act as a “campaign of resistance” to protect Scotland from Boris Johnson’s government. He said Labour would “work on a cross-party basis to resist the attacks that Boris Johnson will wage on the people” and asked Sturgeon to “use all the powers of this parliament as part of that campaign of resistance”.
Leonard said: “I am happy to join her in George Square but will she use the powers of this Parliament?”
The FM replied: “Yes, I will. I spent a considerable part of my statement talking about the ways in which we need to redouble our efforts to use the powers of this Parliament – which the Scottish Government has always done – to protect Scotland from an increasingly right-wing Conservative government.”
Citing their different stances on independence, she added: “I support the ability of this Parliament to do as much as it can but I never supported a Scottish Parliament just so we could mitigate the worst impacts of a Conservative government at Westminster.”
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