Scottish independence back in spotlight
Fresh calls for referendum to counter Brexit
A Conservative victory in the United Kingdom’s election is a win for those who want to detach from the European Union but it has also reinvigorated calls to hold another independence referendum in Scotland that would break apart the country and perhaps leave Scotland in a position to remain in the EU.
This convoluted scenario unfolded in the shadow of the disastrous showing for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, which lost large swaths of its traditional territory, and pushed Boris Johnson, the leader of the Conservative Party, back into Downing Street with the largest majority since Margaret Thatcher’s third-term 1987 victory.
That said, neither of the major parties did well in Scotland, which along with England, Northern Ireland and Wales makes up the U.K.
Rather, the Scottish National Party, under the leadership of Nicola Sturgeon, won 48 of 59 Scottish seats — 13 more than in the 2017 election — a result that Sturgeon called “a renewed, refreshed and strengthened mandate" and places the SNP as the third most powerful party in Westminster, behind Labour and the Conservatives.
“Boris Johnson may have a mandate to take England out of the European Union. He emphatically does not have a mandate to take Scotland out of the European
Union. Scotland must have a choice over our own future,” Sturgeon declared in the early hours of Friday as the final votes were being tallied.
Johnson spoke to Sturgeon later in the day and said he would not agree to another independence vote, after 55.3 per cent of Scottish voters backed remaining in the U.K. in 2014.
However, 62 per cent of Scots voted in favour of remaining in the EU in the Brexit referendum in June 2016.
Sturgeon said her political mandate now is to give people a choice that must be respected.
“This isn’t about asking Boris Johnson or any other Westminster politician for permission,” the Guardian reported she said in a victory speech in Edinburgh. “This is instead an assertion of the democratic right of the people of Scotland to determine our own future.”
A move toward Brexit is also going to affect Northern Ireland, another country which voted 55.8 per cent in favour of remaining in the EU in 2016.
In short, there are likely to be slightly different customs rules for Northern Ireland — because of the land border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU country — and the rest of the U.K.
In Northern Ireland, nationalists also made gains. The Democratic Unionist Party, which supported the Conservatives in the last Parliament, lost seats, while Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour Party made gains, prompting discussion on whether there should be a vote on a united Ireland.
“Northern Ireland is entering into a world of nationalist strength, unionist weakness, U.K. government near-indifference, and a Brexit deal that emphasizes connections between Northern Ireland and the Republic at the expense of connections between Northern Ireland and Britain,” reported the Washington Post.
Randall Hansen, director of the Centre for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at the Munk School, says there’s “no question” that election result will make “an independent Scotland and a reunified Ireland more likely.”
“Brexit is being pushed through against the majority preference of those two nations of the United Kingdom,” Hansen said.
But, that doesn’t make it easy. The political case is easier in Scotland, he said, because it’s relatively homogeneous and the votes for the SNP indicate support for independence.
But, economically, it’s different because of its ties to the broader U.K.
In Ireland, though, the economic case is easier because of the existing economic ties to the EU, whereas the political case is harder.
“It’ll be a nightmare because you have the Protestant community, which has it extremist elements at the best of times, which bitterly doesn’t want to go.”
While Scotland had raised the possibility in years past of parts of the U.K. remaining in the EU, other European politicians expressed reluctance to allow this, citing interference in internal British affairs.
Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat party leader, stepped down after she lost her seat to a SNP candidate and Corbyn, who had been rattled by allegations of anti-semitism, also announced he’d be leaving as the Labour party leader.
DEMOCRATIC RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND TO DETERMINE OUR OWN FUTURE.