Sturgeon will blink first over timing of new ballot

NICOLA Sturgeon will today blink first in her stand- off with Theresa May as she admits she will compromise in her demand for a referendum in the next two years.

The First Minister will concede that the independence ballot could be put back until after Brexit in an apparent climbdown just days after demanding a vote by spring 2019.

After Mrs May warned on Thursday that ‘now is not the time’ for a referendum, Miss Sturgeon will say: ‘If her concern is timing then – within reason – I am happy to have that discussion.’

The First Minister will tell the SNP spring conference in Aberdeen that if MSPs pass a vote next week, the demand for another independence ballot will become ‘the will of the democraticallyelected Parliament of Scotland’, and that refusing a referendum will ‘ shatter beyond repair any notion of the UK as a respectful partnership of equals’.

She will say: ‘If a majority in the Scottish Parliament endorses that position, the Prime Minister should be clear about this. At that point a fair, legal, agreed referendum – on a timescale that will allow

‘No PM should dare stand in the way’

the people of Scotland an informed choice – ceases to be just my proposal, or that of the SNP. It becomes the will of the democratically- elected Parliament of Scotland.’

Her comments come as Deputy First Minister John Swinney refused to rule out holding an unofficial vote if Mrs May completely refuses another referendum, and the SNP’s leader in Westminster Angus Robertson accused Mrs May of being too ‘scared’ to accept Miss Sturgeon’s demand for a vote in 2018/19.

He told the conference in Aberdeen: ‘Just in case some people in Whitehall aren’t listening, Scotland’s referendum is going to happen, and no UK Prime Minister should dare to stand in the way of Scottish democracy.’

But Mrs May dismissed the plans as ‘muddle on muddle’. She rejected the SNP’s ‘divisive, obsessive’ nationalism at the Conservative Spring Forum in Cardiff and said the First Minister was using Brexit as a ‘pretext’ for a second ballot.