Holyrood? It’s time to close it
Ukip slated as it announces manifesto promise to axe ‘windbag’ parliament
UKIP has been branded an ‘irrelevance’ in Scotland after party chiefs revealed it is set to campaign for the abolition of the Scottish parliament.
The party, which has never had an MSP elected, has announced it is drawing up a policy calling for Holyrood to be shut down.
MEP David Coburn, the party’s leader in Scotland, said the Scottish parliament was a ‘waste of the public’s money’ and filled with ‘second-rate windbags’ who ‘look bad and sound bad’.
He said Ukip was considering proposing in its next Holyrood manifesto that the parliament be closed down and the 59 Scottish MPs elected to Westminster take on its role and ‘meet once a month in Edinburgh to do Scottish affairs’.
He claimed that the proposal could boost Ukip’s popularity north of the Border because at least one in five Scots agrees that Holyrood should be scrapped but are ‘frightened’ to make their feelings known publicly.
His controversial views came under attack from the Tories and the SNP, who both said the ‘crazy’ policy proves that Ukip are an ‘irrelevance’ in Scotland.
Ukip has previously called for the abolition of Holyrood but scrapped the policy before the 2016 Scottish election as it tried unsuccessfully to get its first MSPs into the parliament.
Mr Coburn, 59, who lost his deposit in last year’s General Election after securing only 540 votes in Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, said: ‘The Scottish parliament needs to work in lock step with Westminster, otherwise all it is is an excuse for a bunch of separatists to make life difficult and for two parliaments to fight with each other, which is a waste of the public’s money.’
He said there was ‘no point having two parliaments doing the same thing’, adding: ‘If the Scottish parliament can’t work with Westminster, let’s get shot of it.’
Asked if he felt that campaigning for the abolition of the Scottish parliament could damage Ukip’s hopes of getting candidates elected to Holyrood, he said: ‘Ukip did that going into European elections and we got what we wanted, which was Brexit. In a recent poll, 20 per cent of Scots said they want to get rid of the Scottish parliament – they see it as a waste of time.’
The ScotCen Social Attitudes Survey, published last year, found 8 per cent of Scots think Holyrood should be abolished.
As for Brexit, Mr Coburn said he thought the parliament was wrongfully ‘being used’ over the issue.
Scottish Conservative policy coordinator Donald Cameron said: ‘Ukip have never been relevant in Scotland and, with policies like this, never will be.’
He said that seeking to abolish Holyrood was ‘crazy’.
An SNP spokesman dismissed Ukip as ‘a complete irrelevance’.