BORIS Johnson's government have dismissed a proposal by senior Tories to agree to a second independence referendum on the condition that Scots living in the rest of the UK can vote too.
Cabinet ministers are pushing the Prime Minister to increase the chances of saving the Union by allowing Scots living anywhere in the UK to vote in a second independence referendum.
But the suggestion has today been rejected by Johnson's government. In January this year the PM indicated in January there should not be another vote until around 2055 - some 41 years after the referendum in 2014.
Asked by The National if ministers would agree to a new vote so long as the franchise was extended to Scots living elsewhere in the UK, a UK government spokeswoman said: "The sole priority of the UK Government is on continuing to roll out the UK’s life-saving vaccine programme and recovering from this health and economic emergency.
"It is our duty and our responsibility to focus entirely on Covid recovery. That is what people in Scotland, rightly, expect."
Earlier today Nicola Sturgeon hit out at the proposal saying it would "rig the vote".
However, she added that it suggested the UK Government were conceding the referendum should take place.
Sturgeon tweeted: "I see the anti independence campaign is trying to rig the rules of indyref2 again (tho in doing so they also concede that it’s going to happen). Maybe they should just argue their case on its merits and allow everyone who lives in Scotland to decide democracy."
Johnson is also being urged to appoint Ruth Davidson, the former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, to a newly created role of constitutional secretary, making her nominal head of the pro-Union campaign.
The First Minister promised a referendum before the end of 2023 after securing a pro-independence majority in Holyrood in last month’s elections. She is expected to start pushing for one as soon as the autumn.
The intervention today reflects a wider debate within the Tories about how best to combat independence.
Some figures including former Chancellor George Osborne have advised that the best policy for the PM is to simply say "no" to a new vote.
Johnson's position has been to refuse a new referendum but he is coming under pressure from some in his Cabinet to do more to advance the case for the Union amid fears continually rejecting one will in itself cause a backlash and leading to increased support for independence.
One cabinet minister told The Times: “We know Sturgeon will start trying to force another referendum as soon as she thinks it is politically tenable again, so there are things we can and should do now to be ready for her.
"One thing is to open up eligibility of the vote to all Scots in the UK, not just those living in Scotland. The other is to bring Ruth back into the front line. She is the best pro-Union voice we have.”
Another senior Tory figure added: “Independence is behind in the polls now, and Sturgeon is getting flak from her own side for not talking about it since the election.
"We need to get out there on the front foot and start acting like we’re ahead and not just wait for her to catch up again, which was the catastrophic mistake we made after the 2014 referendum.”
No 10’s “Union unit” has lost two leaders in the past year and its role has now been passed to a cabinet committee. With Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, now focusing on the Covid-19 recovery, there is no single senior government figure in charge of stopping independence.
An estimated 800,000 people who were born in Scotland now live in England and up to 50,000 live in Wales. The significant majority of them are estimated to be pro-Union.
The proposal to allow them to vote was debated before the first referendum in 2014, when voters turned down independence by 55% to 45%. Tories pushing for the move insist the precedent is the decision to allow British citizens living overseas a vote in the 2016 EU referendum.
Sir John Curtice, the polling expert, calculated that the inclusion of Scots living elsewhere would swing the vote against independence as long as the other side did not command the support of more than 54% of voters in Scotland.
Davidson stood down as an MSP at the Holyrood elections last month and has been nominated for a peerage. She has said she would not rule out a ministerial job in future, but indicated the time was not yet right.
Tentative plans for a cabinet reshuffle in July have been abandoned by No 10 because of the pandemic.
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