Ex-SNP No2 Sillars warns Sturgeon that Leave voters won’t back independence
GP, Lanark. LEGENDARY nationalist Jim Sillars has rocked the independence debate by revealing he would not vote Yes in a second referendum.
The former SNP deputy leader said he would abstain in any future vote if it meant a separate Scotland rejoining the European Union.
And he warned First Minister Nicola Sturgeon that many other Leave voters who previously backed independence would do the same.
Sillars – the widower of nationalist heroine Margo MacDonald – played a key role in the 2014 Yes campaign, touring the country in a van dubbed the “Margo Mobile”.
But asked how he would vote in a second poll, he said: “I would abstain. I would not vote to remain in the UK but at the same time I would not vote to go into an even worse Union.
“That would apply to a fair number of people like me who voted Leave. People I know and campaigned with didn’t vote on immigration. They voted Leave because they had read the Lisbon Treaty and realised they were governed by an unelected elite.”
Sturgeon has repeatedly said a new vote is “all but inevitable” after Scotland voted to remain in the EU but was overruled by votes in other parts of the UK. The SNP leader is expected to take a further step towards indyref2 when she addresses activists at her party’s spring conference next week.
Sillars warned the move could backfire if Theresa May manages to secure a free trade deal with the EU.
Polls suggest thousands of Yes voters from 2014 are reconsidering the view after backing Brexit in the EU referendum.
Despite Sturgeon’s strong pro-EU position, it emerged that former SNP health minister Alex Neil voted for Brexit. He claimed at least five other SNP MSPs backed Leave.
Sillars, 79, said of Sturgeon: “I hope she finds a way out of the corner into which she has boxed herself in respect of demanding the referendum very soon.
“Whatever the position is vis-a-vis the EU, I cannot conceive of the Yes movement winning in 2018 in the middle of [Brexit] negotiations. We would be subject to the cry from Westminster, ‘Why don’t you wait to see what the deal is?’”
He added: “The SNP would look very silly, having chuntered on all the time while the negotiations are taking place, if Theresa May turns round and says, ‘We’ve got a tariff-free deal’.”
An SNP spokesman said: “Despite being an architect of the Independence in Europe policy, Jim Sillars is a long-standing and outspoken critic of the EU, and he’s entitled to his view.
“But Scotland voted decisively, by a 24-point margin, to remain in Europe and the SNP will do what it takes to protect Scotland’s vital national interests in the face of a Tory Government with no mandate north of the Border but which now thinks it can do what it wants to Scotland and get away with it.”