Johnson calls on SNP to focus on Covid instead of referendum demand
B o r i s Jo h n s o n h a s a g a i n dismissed holding a second independence referendum.
Speaking during the Liaison Committee, the Prime Minister insisted the public instead want the UK to focus on tackling coronavirus instead.
In a heated exchange with SNP MP Pete Wishart, he was accused of speaking “an utter load of rubbish”.
He said: “We had a referendum in 2014 which senior members of your party, perhaps not you, said was a once generation event, it was on that basis that people vote the way they did, very substantially to keep our country together.
“One of the weirdest things I've heard in the past couple of days is the Scottish Nationalist
Party is so averse to anything that comes from England I'm told you won't even use the word Oxford vaccine.
“You need to ask yourself whether you are seriously saying that right now, in the middle of a pandemic, whether the people of Scotland or of the UK or anywhere think it is sensible to have a referendum on a constitutional issue when we are trying to get the pandemic down, to generate millions of jobs that we are going to need over the next few years to allow this whole country to bounce back together.”
M r Jo h n s o n we n t o n t o accuse the S cottish Affairs S elect Committee chair of wanting to "scrap the bomb, scrap the Queen, scrap the p o u n d ", a n d c l a i m e d M r Wishart could not say what the “prospectus is for the destruction of the United Kingdom” – such as keeping the pound or Army.
Mr Wishart accused him of refusing to listen to Scotland. He said: "What the Scottish people want is a say in their future, and you're not pre - pared to do that.”