Tories will use the damage of Brexit they’ve inflicted as an argument for more control
Sturgeon warns of Westminster attacks on IndyRef2 plan
NICOLA Sturgeon has admitted there will be “challenges to overcome” if Scotland becomes independent.
In a speech to the SNP conference, the First Minister said she would lay out her revised case “openly and honestly” as she repeated her call for IndyRef2.
She said: “Nothing will fall into our laps. But, like all countries, we face challenges whatever path we take.”
However, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman rejected her call even before she had finished speaking.
Sturgeon’s words came after her party secured a historic fourth term in Government at May’s Holyrood election.
SNP Government policy is for a referendum to take place before the end of 2023, Covid permitting.
Sturgeon favours a joint agreement with Westminster, as was the case in 2014, but the UK Government is refusing to agree to another vote.
In an online address, Sturgeon said leading the country through the pandemic was the “most important job” she’s had.
She said she was hopeful Scotland could “soon” look ahead with “greater confidence” to “better days ahead”.
On IndyRef2, she repeated her belief the SNP Government had secured the right to hold a referendum: “By any standard of democracy, our victory in May represents an unarguable mandate to implement the manifesto we put before the country.
“And that is what we intend to do. It is called democracy.”
In a nod to the difficulties posed for the independence case by Brexit and Covid, she said: “The Scottish Government is now restarting work to make sure that the choice about our country’s future is a fully informed one. “No one is saying there won’t be challenges to overcome. We will set those out openly and honestly. “That is the choice we intend to offer the Scottish people in a legal referendum within this term of Parliament – Covid permitting, by the end of 2023.” She called for the Tory Government to work with her on a legal referendum.
But she claimed the Tories would use the chaos caused by their own Brexit policy to harm the independence argument, saying: “Westminster will use all that damage that they have inflicted as an argument for yet more Westminster control.
“By making us poorer, they’ll say we can’t afford to be independent. By cutting our trade with the EU, they’ll say we are too dependent on the rest of the UK.
“By causing our working population to fall, they’ll say the country is aging too fast. They want us to believe we are
powerless in the face of the disastrous decisions they have taken for us and the damage those decisions is doing.”
Johnson’s spokesman dismissed her call for IndyRef2: “Ministers and officials across the UK Government departments are focusing on tackling the Covid-19 pandemic and supporting the economic recovery.
“Scottish people have been clear they want to see the UK Government and devolved governments working together to defeat the pandemic – that’s our priority.
“Last week, we announced further investment in health and social care across the UK, including £1.1billion to Scotland by 2025, and we’ll continue to work closely with our Scottish counterparts.” Sturgeon’s speech also majored on Tory plans to cut Universal Credit. She said: “The loss of more than £1000 a year will be utterly devastating.
“It will quite literally take food out of children’s mouths.”
And she criticised antivaxxers who are trying to persuade people not to get the Covid vaccine, telling them: “Stop putting the health and wellbeing of the country at risk.”
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “We are up against a global pandemic, a growing healthcare crisis, a jobs crisis and a climate emergency – there is no time to waste.
“There were no new ideas to help Scots, just the same old rhetoric, slogans and platitudes. Scotland deserves so much better than that.”