Now it’s getting personal! May blocks Sturgeon bid for Scots poll
THERESA May was locked in a bitter constitutional stand- off with Nicola Sturgeon last night after rejecting her request for a second referendum on Scottish independence.
in an announcement that enraged the SNP, the Prime Minister said she would block Miss Sturgeon’s demand for a referendum in the run-up to the UK’s exit from the EU.
Sources indicated that the ban on a second referendum is likely to last until at least 2021 – and possibly for years longer.
Mrs May said holding a divisive referendum in the run-up to Brexit could undermine the negotiations with Brussels.
And she said it ‘wouldn’t be fair’ to ask Scottish voters to choose a new destiny until after the UK has left the EU. in a blunt message to the SNP, she said: ‘Now is not the time.’
Scottish Secretary David Mundell hammered home the point, saying any request for a second referendum in the immediate future ‘will be declined’.
The tough stance led Miss Sturgeon to accuse the Prime Minister of a ‘democratic outrage’. Scotland’s First Minister wrongfooted Downing Street this week by demanding a referendum between the autumn of 2018 and the spring of 2019, as the UK prepares to leave the EU.
Yesterday Miss Sturgeon accused Mrs May of ‘trying to block the people of Scotland having a choice over their future’.
She added: ‘This is like winding the clock back to the bad old days of Margaret Thatcher.
‘it is an argument for independence really in a nutshell, that Westminster thinks it has got the democratically elected mandate of the Scottish Government and the majority in the Scottish Parliament. history may look back on today and see it as the day the fate of the Union was sealed.’
Downing Street denied Mrs May’s announcement had been rushed forward to distract attention from a bombshell Electoral Commission report on Tory election spending at the last election. But officials had previously indicated they would not respond to Miss Sturgeon until at least the end of next week.
The Scottish Parliament is expected to back Miss Sturgeon’s demand for a second referendum when it votes on the issue next Wednesday. Although the SNP has lost its majority in the holyrood parliament, it has the support of the pro-independence Greens on the issue.
Downing Street urged the Scottish Parliament to cancel the vote rather than force a constitutional confrontation. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘We would hope that now we have made this clear, they might step back.’
But Miss Sturgeon indicated the vote would go ahead, saying: ‘it would be outrageous for the Scottish Parliament to be frozen out of the process. The Scottish Government has a cast-iron democratic mandate to offer people a choice and that mandate must be fulfilled.’ A spokesman for Miss Sturgeon said rejecting a referendum was ‘a miscalculation and a blunder of epic and historic proportions’.
Under the terms of the 1998 devolution deal, any referendum on Scottish independence has to be agreed by both the Scottish Parliament and Westminster. Downing Street yesterday said it would reject any request for a so-called Section 30 agreement without even holding a vote in Parliament.
The Prime Minister told ITV News: ‘Right now we should be working together, not pulling apart. We should be working together to get that right deal for Scotland, that right deal for the UK, as i say that’s my job as Prime Minister and so for that reason i say to the SNP, now is not the time.’ She said discussing a referendum now would ‘make it more difficult for us to be able to get the right deal for Scotland, and the right deal for the UK’.
And she added: ‘More than that i think it wouldn’t be fair to the people of Scotland because they’d be asked to make a crucial decision without the necessary information, without knowing what the future partnership will be or what the alternative for an independent Scotland would look like.’
Mrs May will underline the message today in a speech to the Conservative Party spring conference in Cardiff where she will set out her ‘ Plan for Britain’ as she prepares to trigger divorce proceedings from the EU.
She will say that the Union is ‘more than just a constitutional artefact’, adding: ‘ The coming negotiations with the EU will be vital for everyone in the United Kingdom. Every person, every family, every business, every community the length and breadth of the United Kingdom – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern ireland.
‘it is essential that we get the right deal, and that all of our efforts and energies as a country are focused on that outcome. We need to do so united, as one United Kingdom, all pulling together to get the best outcome.’
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said the party will not back a rerun of the 2014 referendum unless there is ‘clear public or political consent’ for it.
Polls suggest the majority of Scots do not want a re-run of the divisive vote which delivered a decisive 55:45 majority for staying in the UK.
But elections expert Professor John Curtice warned that blocking a referendum could spark a ‘politically catastrophic’ surge in support for independence.
‘Now is not the time’