Scots would vote to stay in the UK, says former PM Brown
SCOTS would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in a second independence referendum, Gordon Brown has claimed.
The former Prime Minister also said it was ‘unrealistic’ for the SNP to claim there could be another vote in 2021.
He warned it would lead to a ‘hard battle’ at a time when the country continues to deal with the pandemic, including a recession, growing unemployment and a massive vaccination effort.
The SNP has recently claimed that there could be an independence referendum as early as next year if the party wins a majority at the Holyrood election.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has refused to be drawn on the timing of another referendum but the Nationalists’ Westminster leader Ian Blackford has said that it could be in 2021.
Mr Brown said: ‘I think if there was a referendum we’d win it and Scotland would stay in the United Kingdom but it is going to be a hard battle because people are frustrated, they’re fed up, not just in Scotland but in regions of England and Wales and I see a sense growing right across the whole of the United Kingdom that people in the regions and the nations, they are not being listened to.’
He believes that after the pandemic the UK must ‘review the way we govern ourselves’ to ensure people feel they are being listened to. The former PM appeared on Sky News’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday programme days after an Ipsos Mori poll put support for independence at 56 per cent.
Over recent months a number of surveys have shown growing support for splitting the UK.
But Mr Brown said: ‘I don’t think people want a referendum now and the question is whether you should have a referendum.
‘You could have a referendum if you wanted to but should you have a referendum? And the answer is no, I don’t think you should have a referendum when we’re dealing with a pandemic.
‘We’ve got to deal with the recession, unemployment is rising, we’ve got to vaccinate people in Scotland and perhaps a second round.
‘We don’t know if there is going to be a third or fourth wave of this disease and the idea that you can have a referendum during the first 12 months of next year seems to me to be quite unrealistic and is a sign that the Nationalists are really out of touch with the priorities of the Scottish people.’
Mr Brown urged Boris Johnson t o bring t he country together. But he claimed the Prime Minister was ‘completely out of touch’ and unpopular in Scotland over his comments that devolution had been a disaster.
Mr Brown, who was Chancellor when the Scottish parliament was established in 1999, added: ‘ There i s something quite wrong about the British constitution now that we have a multi-national state, we have regions with a great deal of different needs and different traditions and different cultures and different desires but this Government has not found a way of cooperating with them, of consulting them, of working with them.’
‘It is going to be a hard battle’