UNIONISTS don’t have a leg to stand on in refusing a second referendum – and they know it.
It was clear from both Nicola Sturgeon and Michael Gove’s appearances on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday that the UK Government’s line on refusing indyref2 after the landslide SNP victory we saw over the weekend won’t stand up to scrutiny.
Marr tried to pile the pressure on the First Minister about whether a UK legal challenge in the Supreme Court would be successful in stopping a Holyrood-run referendum should Boris Johnson refuse a Section 30 order, but that line of questioning completely misses the point.
As Sturgeon said, this would signal to Scotland that the Union is not in fact “voluntary” at all and that flies in the face of the very basic principles of democracy.
READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon ‘wouldn’t rule out’ indyref2 by spring next year
It is an “absurd” position, as she said, that the UK Government would even consider it.
And you could tell that the Tories in Westminster know that. After all, why else would they bring out Gove (who appeared before Sturgeon) to rule out going forward with the legal challenge?
He continued on the Unionist line that because the SNP didn’t get a majority – something that isn’t even supposed to be possible in the Scottish Parliament – there was no mandate for indyref2.
It’s starting to feel as if the Unionists have completely forgotten about the Green Party, who gained two seats and had a huge increase in their vote share, and are also in favour of an independence referendum in the next parliamentary term.
You can see already where the battle lines will be drawn – the currency issue, the fiscal transfer and the economic impact on Scotland. But we won’t know what those things will look like until we get a white paper, as we did in 2014, explaining how it will all work.
And again, Marr trying to “gotcha” the First Minister by saying that Scotland was subsidised by England completely fell flat as she interrupted him with an annoyed “ehhhh” and said she didn’t accept that argument.
WATCH: Nicola Sturgeon hits back at suggestion Scotland can’t afford independence
As Sturgeon pointed out, Scotland’s current fiscal position is because of Westminster government decisions and isn’t reflective of how an independent Scotland’s finances would work. After all, Scotland still can’t borrow money and doesn’t have full control of its fiscal powers.
Quite rightly, Sturgeon pointed out the SNP ran its campaign on a manifesto that said the referendum would be held once the pandemic crisis is over, but that didn’t stop the majority of Marr’s questions being on legal challenges, finances and everything else independence related.
But, it looks like this could be a little earlier than the estimated 2023 date that was floated during the campaign, with the outgoing head of the vaccine task force saying that he thinks there won’t be any Covid-19 circulating in the UK by August.
Sturgeon admitted she wouldn’t rule it out, and I think it’s clear that however long it takes for Scotland to get out of this crisis, there is no stopping indyref2.
Lets just hope it’s sooner, rather than later.
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