GIVE IT A REST, NICOLA!

Before ink’s dried on historic trade deal, SNP chief says it’s time for Scots to ‘chart our own future as an independent, European nation’

NICOLA Sturgeon is expected to use the Brexit trade deal to launch a fresh push for Scottish independence.

The First Minister hit out at the agreement reached on Thursday, saying it showed now was the time for Scotland to ‘chart our own future as an independent, European nation’.

Reacting to the news that a Brexit deal had been sealed, she reiterated that it was happening against her will and claimed Boris Johnson had broken promises to Scotland’s fishing industry.

She also accused the Prime Minister of ‘cultural vandalism’ for pulling out of the Erasmus programme, which allows students to study across Europe.

‘Scotland did not vote for any of this and our position is clearer than ever,’ she said. ‘ Scotland now has the right to choose its own future as an independent country and once more regain the benefits of EU membership.

‘It beggars belief that in the midst of a pandemic and economic recession, Scot

‘Major promises have been broken’

land has been forced out of the EU single market and customs union with all the damage to jobs that will bring.

‘A deal is better than No Deal. But, just because, at the 11th hour, the UK Government has decided to abandon the idea of a No Deal outcome, it should not distract from the fact that they have chosen a hard Brexit, stripping away so many of the benefits of EU membership.

‘And while we do not yet have full details on the nature of the deal, it appears major promises made by the UK Government on fisheries have been broken and the extent of these broken promises will become apparent to all very soon.’

She said people in Scotland had voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, ‘but their views have been ignored’.

The historic post-Brexit deal with the EU on Christmas Eve came four years after 62 per cent of Scots backed remain in the 2016 referendum.

Miss Sturgeon added: ‘This is a far harder Brexit than could have been imagined when the EU referendum took place, damaging and disrupting this nation’s economy and society at the worst possible time.

‘We are doing everything we can to mitigate against the consequences of the UK Government’s actions – but we cannot avert every negative outcome.

‘We know that businesses are already struggling under the burden of Covid-19, and are now faced with the need to prepare for this hard Brexit in little more than a week’s time.

‘We will do all we can to help them and are issuing updated information and advice and urge those most affected, including businesses, to prepare.’ Writing on Twitter about the Erasmus programme, Miss Sturgeon said: ‘There will be lots of focus, rightly, on the economic costs of Brexit.

‘But ending UK participation in Erasmus, an initiative that has expanded opportunities and horizons for so many young people, is cultural vandalism by the UK Government.’

Miss Sturgeon’s Scottish Nationalist Party has said it will go into next year’s Holyrood elections seeking a fresh mandate for a new independence vote. She is a staunch opponent of Brexit and has previously made clear that if Scotland were to vote for independence in any future referendum she would try to take the country back into the EU.

But there remain unanswered questions about whether an independent Scotland would be allowed to join the EU given the SNP’s existing policy of retaining the pound. Membership would also mean relinquishing control of major policy areas such as fisheries and potential trade barriers with England. It would also raise the prospect of a hard border between England and Scotland. It remains to be seen if the Brexit deal will increase support for independence among Scots.

Analyst Sir John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said that it depended on whether Brexit dissatisfaction was already ‘baked in’ to polling numbers.

‘It depends what happens over the next few months and whether the change becomes a friction that grates, for example if Dover is still bunged up, people’s postCovid [pandemic] flights are cancelled and they get enormous mobile phone bills,’ he told The Guardian. So far, Westminster has been unwilling to give ground on the issue of independence with ministers suggesting that the result of the referendum in 2014, when 55 per cent voted to remain, had settled the matter ‘for a generation’.

Miss Sturgeon has promised to delay campaigning for another Scottish independence vote until the country is free of the coronavirus pandemic.

But a number of opinion polls in recent months have shown a clear lead for ending the Union, boosted by what some have seen as Miss Sturgeon’s strong handling of the Covid-19 crisis.