The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Sturgeon draws battle lines for IndyRef2 poll
Nicola Sturgeon insisted she has an “unarguable mandate” to hold a second vote on Scottish independence, as she launched a fierce attack on the UK prime minister.
The Scottish first minister and SNP leader criticised Boris Johnson and his Conservative government for its stance on immigration, over Brexit and on plans to hike National Insurance and cut Universal Credit payments.
She sought to use her speech to the SNP national conference to contrast the different approaches taken by her government in Edinburgh and Mr Johnson’s at Westminster.
But she also restated her intention to hold another independence referendum when the coronavirus crisis is past.
The SNP won its fourth consecutive term in power at Holyrood in May’s Scottish elections, and Ms Sturgeon insisted that that victory “represents an unarguable mandate to implement the manifesto we put before the country”.
This included plans for another independence ballot, with Ms Sturgeon telling supporters the time to make a decision on Scotland’s future was “approaching”.
While the prime minister has so far rejected all calls for another vote, Ms Sturgeon said she hoped the two governments could reach an agreement, as happened in 2014, “to allow the democratic wishes of the people of Scotland to be heard and respected”.
But she insisted: “This much is clear. Democracy must and democracy will prevail.”
Ms Sturgeon was clear she wants there to be “a legal referendum within this term of parliament, Covid permitting, by the end of 2023”.
Speaking about the coronavirus pandemic, she said: “The crisis is not yet over, but we will get through it.
“And then it will be the time to think not of the past but of Scotland’s future.
“To decide who should be in charge of that future.”
The first minister insisted: “People in Scotland have the right to make that choice.
“To decide to take our destiny into our own hands and shape a better future.
“Trust me, the time for that choice is approaching.”
Ms Sturgeon insisted that leading Scotland through the ongoing Covid crisis was “the most important job”.
But her speech sought to look to the future to the prospect of “better days ahead”.
She also highlighted “the different vision of society we in the Scottish Government have from those at Westminster”.
Offering asylum to those in “dire need”, such as the people fleeing Afghanistan, is an “expression of our common humanity”.
But she claimed the UK Government’s Nationality and Borders Bill “fails that basic test of humanity”.
She went on to slam the Tories at Westminster for their decision to push ahead with a “hard Brexit right in the midst of a global pandemic”.
Meanwhile, the UK Government’s planned hike in National Insurance contributions, to boost funding for the NHS and social care, “fails the basic test of fairness”, she said.
Ms Sturgeon said Scotland could have “a Westminster Tory government rejected by the people of Scotland and taking us in the wrong direction”.
In contrast she claimed that independence would give Scotland “the full range of powers needed to make our country all it can be”.
Tory MSP Donald Cameron, the party’s spokesman on the constitution at Holyrood, accused the first minister of putting forward a “wild conspiracy theory that the UK is trying to make Scotland poorer when the Scottish budget is at a record high, the UK furlough scheme has saved a million Scottish jobs, and the UK vaccine scheme has protected the health of millions of Scots”.
He said: “Instead of focusing on the NHS crisis and protecting jobs, Nicola Sturgeon has invented her own nationalist ‘project fear’.
“To distract from the SNP’s domestic failings, she’s ramping up division.”
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “Nicola Sturgeon’s spin does nothing to tackle the levels of child poverty on our streets, the numbers waiting for treatment in our hospitals, and the depth of the economic crisis facing Scotland.”