Scots may get new referendum

Sturgeon moves for poll over Brexit

LONDON // Scotland’s leader added to the Brexit drama yesterday when she said she will seek to hold a new independence referendum because Britain is dragging Scotland out of the EU against its will.

First minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would move to give voters a new chance to leave the UK in the next two years because Scotland was being forced into a “hard Brexit” that it did not vote for.

Britons decided in a June 23 referendum to leave the Euro- pean Union, but Scots voted by 62 to 38 per cent to remain.

Scotland must not be “taken down a path that we do not want to go down without a choice”, Ms Sturgeon said. She spoke in Edinburgh as the British parliament in London neared approval of a Brexit bill that will allow the UK to begin its withdrawal from the EU.

Ms Sturgeon said she would ask the Scottish parliament next week to start the process of calling a referendum, to be held between the autumn of next year and early 2019. She said that by then, Britain’s deal with the EU would be clear and Scottish voters would be able to make “an informed choice”.

The British government led by prime minister Theresa May must agree before a referendum on Scottish independence can be held. The government yesterday said an independence ballot “would cause huge economic uncertainty at the worst possible time”. A spokesman said Britain was seeking “a partnership with the EU that works for the whole of the United Kingdom”.

In a 2014 referendum, Scottish voters rejected independence by 55 per cent to 45 per cent. But Ms Sturgeon said the decision to leave the EU meant a “change of circumstances”.