Forget Indyref 2 for 35 years, Ruth warns Sturgeon
RUTH Davidson has slapped down Nicola Sturgeon’s demands for another independence referendum, promising to fight against a second vote until 2049.
The Scottish Conservative leader – going beyond the Prime Minister’s refusal to be drawn on a timetable – has vowed to hold the SNP to its pledge that a ballot on separation would be a ‘once in a generation’ event. She insisted this should mean an end to independence threats for at least 35 years from the 2014 referendum
Miss Davidson said Scots were angry at the SNP’s ‘relentless drum beat’ for breaking up Britain, and confirmed the Tory manifesto will keep opposing a vote.
Speaking to The Scottish Mail on Sunday last week, Miss Davidson said: ‘When Nicola Sturgeon signed the Edinburgh Agreement that said she would respect the result, I believed her. She said it would be for a generation. We’ll endeavour to make sure that it is.’
Asked how long a generation would be, she said: ‘What was Alex Salmond’s definition? He said between 1979 [the year of the first vote on devolution] and the 2014 independence referendum, that was a generation. That works.’
Mr Salmond himself suggested a generation was between 1979 and 1997 – the first and second devolution referendums – or between 1997 and 2014, when the independence vote was held. On Mr Salmond’s reckoning and counting from 2014, that would mean Indyref2 would be pushed to 2031 – at the earliest.
But the comments of Miss Davidson, a close ally of Theresa May, suggest she is thinking of giving voters a much longer break of 35 years. This will infuriate Nationalists desperate for another ballot on ripping Scotland out of the UK.
Miss Sturgeon has argued for a second referendum between autumn of next year and spring of 2019 – only four years after the last ‘once in a generation’ vote.
However, the UK Government could stonewall the SNP until the next Scottish election in 2021.
That would mean the Nationalists and pro-independence Scottish Greens would have to win another combined Holyrood majority or else be unable to get a Referendum Bill passed at Holyrood.
That could provide difficult after last week’s council election results showed the SNP’s popularity is waning, with the party winning only a third of first preference votes across Scotland.
Miss Davidson believes the bid to turn Brexit into grounds for a ballot on separation has sown the seeds of the SNP’s decline.
She said: ‘They didn’t understand how strongly people would feel about a vote they gave in good conscience being co-opted as a proxy when it came to independence.
‘There’s hundreds of thousands of them out there who are pretty angry. This relentless drum beat since June of last year has led to some of the strength of feeling about Nicola Sturgeon.’
Miss Davidson – who was on the campaign trail in West Linton, Peeblesshire, yesterday with Scottish Secretary David Mundell – claimed Miss Sturgeon was now ‘at least as divisive’ as former SNP leader Alex Salmond had been.
Scottish Tory analysis of council election results suggests they could secure up to 15 seats, including Mr Salmond’s in Gordon, that of SNP deputy leader Angus Robertson in Moray, and Perth and North Perthshire, held by Pete Wishart.
While admitting the General Election is a ‘different game’, Miss Davidson says her party is ‘absolutely in the hunt’ in those areas.
She said the council elections were ‘not a good result for the SNP’, adding there would have been ‘a lot of people locked in a room with [SNP chief executive] Peter Murrell wondering where we go next’. Miss Sturgeon previously claimed Brexit would trigger ‘unstoppable demand’ for a separation vote.
But polls have continuously shown that a majority of Scots still back the Union, and only a third want another independence referendum with the First Minister’s timetable.
Deidre Brock, SNP candidate for Edinburgh North and Leith, said: ‘Ruth Davidson is absolutely right that this is something that should be decided by the people of Scotland, which is exactly what we’re proposing. But Ruth Davidson also said Brexit would be a disaster for Scottish jobs and our economy – now she’s saying that we shouldn’t have the chance to avoid that.
‘It’s only fair that Scotland gets a choice on its future once the terms of Brexit are clear. That should be a decision for Scotland, not Westminster Tories.’
‘Relentless drum beat for independence’