No mention of Indyref on SNP’s conference agenda
MEMBERS of the SNP will not debate the case for breaking up Britain when they meet for the party’s annual conference.
Nicola Sturgeon’s dream of tearing Scotland out of the UK has dominated the conference in recent years.
But a provisional agenda does not have a single mention of independence.
Out of 43 listed ‘potential resolutions’, none refer to the First Minister’s demand for a rerun of the 2014 referendum – although many of them relate to Brexit.
Miss Sturgeon has backtracked from a call to have a vote on separation before Britain leaves the EU after her party lost 500,000 votes and 21 seats in June’s General Election amid a backlash from voters.
Scottish Tory constitution spokesman Adam Tomkins said: ‘People are increasingly realising that a second referendum would be damaging and divisive.
‘But the absence of independence from the formal agenda shouldn’t fool people into thinking the Nationalists have changed their priorities.
‘They exist for the break-up of Britain and nothing else – and SNP diehards won’t tolerate debate about anything else.’
The SNP is due to meet at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow from October 8 to 10. A draft agenda includes motions highlighting the benefits of European Union membership, calls for the devolution of powers over immigration, and demands that Holyrood secures control over farming and fisheries powers after Brexit.
There is also a motion calling for the minimum age of recruitment for the Army to be raised to 18. There are concerns joining at 16 is in conflict with the United Nations Rights of the Child, but some senior party figures are known to oppose the move.
None of the motions refer directly to independence, although party branches have until September 1 to lodge amendments.
An SNP spokesman said: ‘We’re always looking at new ways of giving members a bigger say in our policy development process, so we’re consulting internally on topics to be prioritised for debate at conference.’
After June’s election, Miss Sturgeon told MSPs she needed to ‘reset’ her timetable for another independence referendum. She had previously wanted a vote between the autumn of next year and spring of 2019.
In his Edinburgh Fringe show, Alex Salmond... Unleashed, the former First Minister conceded that an election so soon after Miss Sturgeon’s referendum demand had caused the slump in the SNP’s vote.
He said: ‘The main thing is a timing one... Nobody realised, not even Theresa May, that she was going to go up a mountain, brainstorm and decide to call an election.
‘The referendum was a policy designed for when Brexit unwound. It was clear and devastatingly obvious that Brexit was going to be a car crash. It is much more difficult to do that a couple of years in advance, to say, listen, we’re going to need an insurance policy for the disaster which is looming.’