Think again about vote, Scots tell May
ABERDEEN British Prime Minister Theresa May, who is about to trigger Brexit, should think again about her refusal to discuss a new Scottish independence referendum, Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon has told her Scottish National Party’s annual conference.
May has stoked anger among the Scottish nationalists by blocking their demands for a new independence referendum before talks for Britain to leave the European Union end.
‘‘[May] has time to think again, and I hope she does. If her concern is timing, then – within reason – I am happy to have that discussion,’’ Sturgeon, who heads the devolved Scottish government, said in her keynote speech in Aberdeen.
A vote next week in the Scottish parliament, where proindependence parties have a majority, will almost certainly authorise Sturgeon to seek a legally binding vote on a new referendum. But under Britain’s constitutional arrangements, that vote would have to be signed off by the British parliament.
May, who is facing two years of hugely complex talks with Britain’s soon to be erstwhile EU partners, has said ‘‘now is not the time’’ to discuss the matter of Scotland.
Last June’s vote to leave the EU has altered the political landscape and shaken the ties of the United Kingdom’s four nations. England and Wales voted to leave, while the Scots and the Northern Irish wanted to keep their EU membership.
Faced with being taken out regardless, Scots must have a new choice, argue the nationalists.
Northern Ireland’s largest Irish nationalist party says it also wants a vote on splitting from Britain.
May has been accused of telling Scotland what to do and ignoring its democratic process, something which may increase support for Scottish nationalists.
Scots voted against independence in 2014 by a 10-point margin. But Sturgeon was elected last year on a manifesto which included the possibility of a new independence vote if there were a material change in circumstances, ‘‘such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will’’.
‘‘We can still decide which path we take,’’ Sturgeon told the conference. ‘‘Whatever our different opinions on independence, we can all unite around this simple principle: Scotland’s future must be Scotland’s choice.’’
Sturgeon offered to find a compromise with May over the date of the proposed referendum, after May ruled out holding it between late 2018 and early 2019, Sturgeon’s preferred timetable.
Ms Sturgeon told the BBC that, despite rising hostility between Holyrood and Westminster, she wanted to ‘‘try to work our way through that disagreement’’.
She spoke hours after May attacked the ‘‘divisive and obsessive nationalism’’ of the SNP, warning Sturgeon that more Scots backed staying in the UK than voted to remain in the EU. May said the demands risked damaging Britain’s Brexit talks.
In a speech to her party at the Conservative Spring Conference in the Welsh capital, Cardiff, yesterday, May pledged to forge a closer union within the UK.
May unveiled a ‘‘plan for Brit- REUTERS ain’’ covering every region in the country, and was applauded as she repeated that she would give notice to the EU in the next two weeks that the UK was leaving it for good.
Brexit ‘‘means forging a more united nation, as we put the values of fairness, responsibility and citizenship at the heart of everything we do, and we strengthen the bonds of our precious union, too’’, she told Tory activists. She said Britain was more than just a ‘‘constitutional artifact’’.
In Aberdeen, SNP deputy leader Angus Robertson said May had no right to deny Scotland another referendum. Reuters, The Times, Washington Post