No mandate

Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that the UK government will grant a second independence referendum if there’s a pro-independence majority after the election is bizarre. From a wider UK perspective, it’s quite simple – the Union is reserved and the UK government stood on a platform of avoiding the “chaos” of two further referendums: Brexit and Scottish independence. The UK government has no mandate to grant another referendum.

Trying to claim a referendum mandate by virtue of winning a Scottish election is absurd, since voters are being asked to sanction something which is clearly outside the competence of the Scottish Parliament. David Cameron was wrong to indulge this tactic in the past, although it was reasonable to hold a referendum on the basis that the question had never been asked previously. It would be completely destabilising to have a situation where the UK was at risk of break-up every time a devolved assembly had an election. No other developed democracy in the world would accept this as normal.

There is a clear democratic path to independence and that involves making the case to the whole UK and winning a general election. Failing that, consistent polling in Scotland for pro-independence parties of, say, 65 per cent plus over a 20-year period after the last referendum may also justify a referendum. A 50/50 split just six years after the previous one does not. And as for the argument about needing a referendum due to a “material change of circumstance”, this is flawed by the fact that things change all the time. The Union was forged precisely so that Scotland and England could face changes, good or bad, together.

RICHARD NICHOLAS Parkwood Avenue, Leeds