THE block to holding indyref2 will be overcome just as opposition to devolution was successfully challenged, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Constitution Secretary Michael Russell both argue in the Sunday National today.

Writing for this newspaper the First Minister said: “Trying to hold back the tide of popular opinion didn’t work for the Tories when they argued against devolution in the 1990s – and it won’t work for them now.”

And in his regular Seven Days column Michael Russell said if a majority backed independence supporting parties at the Holyrood elections next year, it would not be “tenable” for the Tories to carry on saying no to a referendum.

He pointed to the example of Canon Kenyon Wright, the campaigner who issued the famous rallying cry in response to Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to accept the idea of devolution: “We say Yes — and we are the people.”

“That yes produced a devolved parliament. It can now produce an independent one,” Russell said.

The path to a second independence referendum was outlined by the Scottish Government in its Programme for Government published this week.

A new draft bill will be published before the end of the parliamentary year, giving details of the Government’s preferred referendum question and terms and timing of a new vote.

The document states if the bill wins majority support after the Holyrood elections then there could then be “no moral or democratic justification whatsoever” for any UK Government to continue to refuse “the rights of the people of Scotland to choose our own future.”

Wright, who died in 2017, played a central role in the creation of the Scottish Parliament, which came into being 10 years after he made his famous statement.

Russell told the Sunday National: “We went through this with devolution. It was much longer with devolution, but what made the difference was that people said it was democracy that mattered.

“I speak to a lot of people in Europe and they find it difficult to understand how it is possible to deny a referendum in the current circumstances.

“The equivalent would be the EU in 2016 saying to Britain no you can’t have a referendum on EU membership – they make that comparison.

“It would be utterly impossible to justify globally – as the Tories would have to do – if the people of Scotland vote clearly in a democratic election in which the Tories are a party and they get defeated and the SNP wins it. I think that is untenable.”

He ruled out taking any other course of action towards holding a referendum, adding: “To do anything other is to also accept that anti-democratic actions can succeed – and we should never do that in a democracy.”

However Russell said if the Holyrood election next year returns a pro-independence majority, the independence referendum bill could then be passed by Holyrood without a Section 30 order first being agreed by Westminster.

“You pass the bill and then the question is does the UK Government accept the veracity of that?” he said.

“By that stage it will have been voted for by the Scottish people and a party – or parties – will have passed it by a majority in the Scottish Parliament.

“So what is the UK Government going to do?”

On Friday, Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford said that no UK Prime Minister would have the right to stand in the way of an independence referendum if the people wanted one.

He told Sky News: “I am very clear that if a population in Scotland, or indeed in Wales, wanted to hold a referendum, it is for the people of Scotland to make that decision. And that decision must be respected.”

Leading pollster Professor Sir John Curtice has also said precedent suggests a vote should be held if the SNP secure a majority at the 2021 election and if this happens it would be “difficult to avoid” another referendum within two to three years.

Speaking on BBC Newsnight, he said that scenario would replicate the 2011 Holyrood result, which led to David Cameron agreeing to the first independence referendum, as well as the Tory General Election victory in 2015 which led to the Brexit vote.

Curtice said: “If the SNP do go into the Holyrood election saying “We want another referendum just like 2014 – that’s what you’re voting for”, and they get an overall majority in that election, then the truth is, the question the UK Government will have to face is, if that isn’t adequate evidence that a referendum should be held, then what would be?”

Dr Nick McKerrell, senior lecturer in law at Glasgow Caledonian University, said it was likely discussions would still have to take place around the details of a future referendum, even with the publication of a bill.

“The question is not solely a matter for the Scottish Government – they can have a position for that, but it has to go to the Electoral Commission for discussion and approval,” he said.