“Another referendum would be divisive and cause huge economic uncertainty at the worst possible time”
Theresa May reacts to Nicola Sturgeon’s demands for a second Scottish independence poll next year
AS LATE as Sunday afternoon, Theresa May had Tuesday, March 14 pencilled in her diary as a potential date for formally triggering Brexit.
Confident that she had seen off a Tory rebellion on the Article 50 Bill, she knew that it would clear Parliament by the end of yesterday, removing the last obstacle in her way.
Whitehall departments had been told to prepare for the big announcement to come this week.
Buckingham Palace was told that the Bill would be sent for royal assent among today’s paperwork in the Queen’s daily red box. Ministers hoped that the Article 50 announcement would finally shift the agenda away from last week’s fumbled Budget.
Then along came Nicola Sturgeon. On Sunday evening, the Scottish National Party secretly briefed journalists that the First Minister would be holding an 11.30 press conference the next morning at her official residence, Bute House.
The Daily Telegraph, having discovered that Ms Sturgeon would be setting out plans for a second independence referendum if Scotland did not get a special deal on Brexit, called Downing Street to find out what they knew.
Ominously for the Prime Minister, the call from the Telegraph was the first No 10 had heard of it. Having been kept in the dark about the timing of the Article 50 announcement, Ms Sturgeon had decided to seize the initiative and hijack the Brexit timetable with a political bombshell.
Despite being armed with the knowledge that Ms Sturgeon was about to make her move, Downing Street appeared to freeze: television and radio broadcasts yesterday morning continued to run reports that Brexit was going to be triggered this week, unchallenged by No 10. In the daily briefing for lobby journalists at 11am yesterday, the Prime Minister’s spokesman shunned the opportunity to rule out an early announcement on Article 50.
An hour later, the picture was very different. Ms Sturgeon had stolen the agenda with spectacular aplomb by announcing that she would set the wheels in motion for a second Scottish independence referendum next week. Her intention, she said, was for the referendum to take place between autumn 2018 and spring 2019 – before Britain exits the EU.
As Westminster came to a halt to stare at television screens showing the press conference from Edinburgh, she said: “I will now take the steps neces- sary to make sure that Scotland will have a choice at the end of this process.
“A choice of whether to follow the UK to a hard Brexit – or to become an independent country, able to secure a real partnership of equals with the rest of the UK and our own relationship with Europe … next week I will seek the authority of the Scottish Parliament to agree with the UK Government the details of a section 30 order – the procedure that will enable the Scottish Parliament to legislate for an independence referendum.
“If Scotland is to have a real choice – when the terms of Brexit are known, but before it is too late to choose our own course – then that choice must be offered between the autumn of next year, 2018, and the spring of 2019.”
Back in Downing Street, the battle to wrestle back the narrative was about to begin. Before heading off to a Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey, Mrs May invited the BBC into the Cabinet room to film her slapping down the First Minister.
Her message to Ms Sturgeon was that “Politics is not a game,” adding that “the majority of the Scottish people don’t want a second independence referendum so instead of playing politics with the future of our country the Scottish Government should focus on delivering good government and services for the people of Scotland”.
The official government response said that “another referendum would be divisive and cause huge economic uncertainty at the worst possible time”.
But Ms Sturgeon’s intervention appeared to have rattled the Prime Minister. By 3.30pm Downing Street was briefing journalists that the Article 50 announcement would not be happening until the final week of March – the first time No 10 had ruled out triggering Brexit this week. March 27 was now the most likely date for the announcement.
Had Mrs May been bounced into pausing Brexit by Ms Sturgeon’s surprise announcement? Sources close to the Prime Minister insisted that she had always intended to wait until the end of March, though no explanation was offered as to why that was a more suitable date than March 14.
It also failed to explain why No 10 had, for days, done nothing to disabuse the media and the rest of Whitehall of the notion that Brexit would be triggered this week. Prime ministerial aides were adamant that Ms Sturgeon had not influenced the decision to postpone Article 50, and insisted that the First Minister would not pressure Mrs May into reconsidering Ms Sturgeon’s demands.
Critics of Mrs May, however, say that she is not good at thinking on her feet, and likes to have plenty of time to consider her response to events.
One person who certainly had not been briefed on when Article 50 would be triggered was Nicola Sturgeon. The entire reason for her surprise press conference was that she was expecting the Article 50 announcement “very possibly as early as tomorrow”, and hence felt the need to issue her ultimatum before Mrs May sent her all-important letter to Brussels.
It was a last-ditch attempt to force the Prime Minister to plead for the special deal for Scotland that Ms Sturgeon has been trying to secure, in which Scotland would remain part of the single market while the rest of Britain dropped out.
“I don’t know whether Article 50 is going to be triggered tomorrow, or Wednesday, or next week or the week after that,” said Ms Sturgeon.
Perhaps if Downing Street had let her in on the secret, the Prime Minister would be having a rather easier week.
‘I will now take the steps necessary to make sure that Scotland will have a choice at the end of this process’