Now Brown lays down the gauntlet on Scotland
Former PM challenges Sturgeon to reveal her plans for independence
GORDON Brown began a fresh campaign to keep Scotland in the UK yesterday after the SNP won a fourth term in its parliamentary elections.
To counter the threat of a second independence referendum, the former prime minister and chancellor said his think-tank, Our Scottish Future, would become a ‘ campaign movement’ fighting for the Union.
He said it would make the ‘patriotic’ case for Scotland to stay in Britain – and would appeal to those who felt trapped between ‘hardline nationalism’ and ‘muscular Unionism’.
Announcing the campaign, Mr Brown demanded that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon explain what independence would mean for Scots.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘ The big issue is not the referendum, the big issue is independence.
‘ I would challenge Nicola Sturgeon – she’s had years to think about this – tell us what independence means; the benefits, tell us the costs, tell us about the pound, tell us about the pension, tell us about the border, tell us about quantitative easing. None of these questions have been answered, and every time you ask her she says she is going to produce a plan some time.
‘ We actually should have answers to these questions by now.’
Had the SNP gained a majority in the Scottish parliament in Thursday’s election, it would have increased the pressure for a fresh referendum, after the SNP failed to gain independence for Scotland in 2014.
Miss Sturgeon’s party fell just one seat short. However, she has insisted that the ‘question of a referendum is now a matter of when – not if’.
Mr Brown said yesterday he was ‘ not afraid of the referendum’, adding: ‘I actually think we’ve got all the arguments and will develop all the arguments that will win that referendum.
‘So I believe if there was a referendum we’d win it.
‘But the truth is that I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next few years.
‘I’m saying, get round a table. You’ve got a political promise that the SNP made, but a legal dubiety. And you’ve got a legal reality that the UK Government claims. That cannot be solved in the courts of law.’
SNP MP John Nicolson said a referendum may be tabled in
‘We should have answers by now’
the next two years. Speaking on Daily Mail columnist Andrew Pierce’s Mail+ podcast, he said: ‘We’ve got to wait until we’re through the Covid epidemic. That’s absolutely the right thing to do.
‘I expect it’s probably going to be tabled in the first two years of the Scottish Parliament. It’s not about the SNP or the Tories or Labour Party. It’s about what Holyrood votes for – how that vote goes determines whether or not we’re going to have an independence referendum.’