How would Scotland vote in second referendum?
Un Scotxit est-il en vue ?
Le vendredi 31 mars, deux jours après le déclenchement de la procédure de sortie de l’Union européenne, la première ministre de l’Ecosse, Nicola Sturgeon, a annoncé avoir formellement demandé au gouvernement britannique de « pouvoir organiser un second référendum d’indépendance ». Le gouvernement britannique a déjà signifié son intention de refuser la demande écossaise puisque, selon Mme May, le moment est mal choisi pour un tel vote…
Glasgow, Scotland - If the UK government was in any doubt about the determination of Scotland's first minister to make good on a promise to go for a second independence referendum in the advent of a so-called "hard Brexit", then it was disabused last month.
2.When Nicola Sturgeon on March 13 announced her intention to seek permission from the regional parliament to hold the referendum between 2018 and 2019, it had followed months of intractable negotiations between the UK government and the regional government on the terms of Scotland's Brexit deal.
3.While the UK voted by a narrow majority to "leave" the European Union in last year's plebiscite, Scotland voted overwhelmingly to "remain" - and Sturgeon's call for a separate Scottish deal ran headlong into British Prime Minister Theresa May's UK-wide approach to quitting all vestiges of the EU project.
UNDER PRESSURE
4. Relations between Sturgeon's Scottish government, which has repeatedly appealed to London to help retain the semi-autonomous region's place within the EU single market after the UK's exit from the EU, and May's British government, which has always asserted Britain's Brexit vote as being politically non-divisible, reached a new low following Sturgeon's announcement.
5.Indeed, after the Scottish National Party (SNP) leader made known her wish to offer Scotland a choice between a "hard Brexit" and becoming an independent country with the ability to establish "our own relationship with Europe", May accused her of "playing politics with the future of the [UK]". The British premier then followed up, on March 16, by rebuffing Sturgeon’s demands stating, "now is not the time" for another poll. "I thought that Sturgeon took the stage of British politics in an audacious move … that struck at the heart of the British establishment," said Scottish writer Gerry Hassan, the author of a new political book, Scotland the Bold. "It then begged many questions of the nature of the independence offer and the processes and the politics that follow from that."
A SECOND INDEPENDENCE REFERENDUM
6. For most observers, Scotland is now a very different place to the one that voted on its constitutional future in 2014, choosing to reject sovereignty by 55 percent to 45 percent. While Brexit has put Scotland on a path towards the EU exit door - against the wishes of its electorate - the steep collapse in the global oil price and slump in oil revenues from the North Sea has made Scotland's economic prospects far from certain.
7."The UK and therefore Scotland's economy is not in its healthiest state as it was in 2014," said James Mitchell, a professor at the University of Edinburgh's Academy of Government. "And Scotland's relative position with the UK has worsened … But another major factor is Brexit - it's a process that we're just at the beginning of and exactly where [the UK] will be in two or three years time is unclear, other than it's not going to be a happy place economically."
8.But how much has Brexit really been responsible for putting Scotland on the brink of a second independence referendum? With opinion polls commonly putting support for Scottish sovereignty at somewhere around the 40 to 50 percent mark, independence campaigners have lamented what they see as a hard Brexitdriven lurch to the right in British politics that has ushered in a wave of xenophobic and antiimmigration sentiments.
A NEW CHALLENGE
9. For Sturgeon, the now-remote prospect of Scotland retaining its single market status - and her contention that losing it would adversely affect Scottish jobs - has made her call for another plebiscite unavoidable.
10.For pro-unionists, however, Sturgeon's Scottish independence "obsession" has simply found a convenient outlet in Britain's Brexit debate that will, they say, only add to further constitutional wrangling and uncertainty. "The type of Brexit being imagined by the British government does make it easier for Nicola Sturgeon [to call another referendum]," said The Spectator magazine's Scotland editor, Alex Massie. "But if it wasn't this, then it might be something else - when it comes to finding reasons for [another poll], she's in a good position to do so."
1. to make, made, made good on one's promise tenir sa promesse / in the advent of en cas de / hard Brexit retrait du R.-U. de l'UE sans maintien de son accès au marché unique (soft et hard définissent la nature des liens que le R.-U. conservera avec l'UE à la fin du processus de désengagement) / to disabuse détromper. 2. to seek, sought, sought chercher (à obtenir), solliciter / intractable difficile, complexe. 3. narrow ici, court(e) / overwhelmingly très majoritairement / to run, ran, run headlong into se heurter de plein fouet à. 4. to appeal to ici, demander à / to assert affirmer / to reach a new low être de nouveau tombé au plus bas. 5. premier premier ministre / to rebuff rejeter / poll scrutin, vote / to take, took, taken the stage occuper la scène / move initiative / establishment pouvoir en place, classes dirigeantes / to beg ici, poser, soulever. 6. path trajectoire / steep abrupt / collapse effondrement / slump forte baisse / prospect perspective. 7. healthy ici, bon / to worsen empirer. 8. on the brink of au bord de /
campaigner militant / lurch ici, virage / to usher in ouvrir la voie à / wave vague. 9. remote lointain ici, peu probable / contention affirmation / adversely de manière défavorable / unavoidable inévitable. 10. convenient commode / outlet ici, exutoire / [it] will only add to further... [cela] ne fera qu'aggraver... / wrangling querelle(s) / editor responsable de publication.