The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
IndyRef2 opposition will be ‘washed away’ by SNP election win
First minister in defiant mood five years on from poll defeat
Westminster resistance to giving Scots a second vote on independence will be “washed away” after another SNP election victory, Nicola Sturgeon has predicted.
Five years after people in Scotland voted to stay part of the UK, the country is facing the possibility of a snap general election.
While successive prime ministers have rejected the first minister’s calls for a second independence referendum, Ms Sturgeon said that would change if her party won again at the polls.
The referendum took place after the SNP won a historic overall majority in the Scottish Parliament in the 2011 Holyrood election – the only time in devolution this has been achieved.
On September 18 2014, voters rejected independence, with 55% backing keeping Scotland in the United Kingdom.
Despite claims from SNP leaders at the time that the referendum would be a “once in a generation” event, Ms Sturgeon has already earmarked the second part of 2020 for a fresh ballot.
She said “so much has changed in the past five years” and that was why the issue should be put back to voters.
At the time of the referendum, Scots were told they could be cast out of the European Union if they voted Yes – but two years later the UK as a whole voted for Brexit, despite almost two-thirds of Scots supporting Remain.
The first minister said the 2014 referendum was the “biggest democratic event Scotland has ever had”.
Five years on, she said: “Scotland is being ripped out the EU against its will by the most dangerous Tory government in modern history.”
As SNP Westminster leader Ian Blackford joined young campaigners in Glasgow to make the case for a fresh ballot on the anniversary, Ms Sturgeon added: “It is worth remembering that nobody born this century had a say in 2014, or indeed a say in the UK’s ill-fated EU referendum.
“But young people from every town and community in Scotland will have their say in a fresh independence referendum – and I am confident that they will overwhelmingly vote Yes.
“No Westminster government, of any party, has the right to stand in the way of the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to determine their own future.
“A win for the SNP in any upcoming election will simply reinforce that – the Westminster wall of opposition to an independence referendum is already crumbling and another election win for the SNP will wash it away.”
Scottish Conservative interim leader Jackson Carlaw said Ms Sturgeon and her party needed to forget what might have been.
He said: “Instead of focusing on the day job, Nicola Sturgeon has focused to the exclusion of all else on the only thing that matters to her and her party – how to overturn the people’s verdict and run it all over again.”
Labour’s shadow Scottish Secretary Lesley Laird said the 2014 referendum result had “never been accepted by the SNP”.
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie said on the anniversary of the vote: “It is disappointing that the SNP have not stood by the Edinburgh Agreement after the legal, fair and decisive vote.”