Sturgeon tells PM: ‘You cannot decide our future’
Salmond says Scotland is stuck in independence ‘Groundhog Day’ ahead of First Minister’s SNP speech
NICOLA STURGEON will today argue that democracy means the Prime Minister must allow another independence vote after Alex Salmond accused her of trapping Scotland in a referendum “Groundhog Day”.
The Scottish First Minister is expected to use her keynote speech to the SNP conference to argue that Boris Johnson must drop his opposition to allowing a referendum if the UK is still a “voluntary union of nations”.
She will say that a Tory Government with only six MPS in Scotland cannot “decide our future without the consent of the people who live here”.
But Mr Salmond, her predecessor and former mentor, yesterday accused her of repeatedly promising another independence vote while “making no progress whatsoever”.
The Alba Party leader said she should “stop finding excuses”, such as Brexit and the pandemic, arguing Mr Johnson could not stop a referendum being held this time next year. Comparing the situation to the Bill Murray film Groundhog Day, where the hero is forced to live the same day over and over again, he said Ms Sturgeon had placed Scotland in a referendum “time loop” that was a “tragedy” rather than a comedy.
In his keynote speech to Alba’s inaugural conference, staged the same weekend as the SNP’S, he said: “If you constantly march people up to the top of the hill and then down again then you end up all singing Rule, Britannia.
“Bill Murray was only trapped in his time for a few months. Scotland’s referendum Groundhog Day has lasted six years.”
Reigniting his bitter feud with Ms Sturgeon, Mr Salmond also said her government’s record on domestic matters and the pandemic was “at its very kindest, mediocre”.
Ms Sturgeon yesterday came under mounting pressure to dump her vaccine passport plan after the UK Government dropped a similar scheme for England and after Scottish football chiefs warned that it could not be implemented.
But she rejected suggestions that she was using coronavirus to delay a referendum, arguing that Scots must be able to focus on their independence choice without worrying about the pandemic.
The SNP conference also overwhelmingly backed her plan to wait until the health crisis is over but stage a referenapproach dum at the “earliest” possible moment after that. She wants another vote by autumn 2023.
Ms Sturgeon last week disclosed she had ordered her civil servants to start drawing up a “detailed” prospectus for independence.
However, her programme for government for the coming year did not include a referendum Bill.
Recent opinion polls have found a majority of Scots oppose staging a referendum in the next two or three years and Boris Johnson has said he will not give her the legal powers to hold one.
Despite regularly flinging insults at the UK Government, Ms Sturgeon will today tell the SNP conference that her to politics and government “will be, as far as possible, co-operation not confrontation.”
“So it is in that spirit of co-operation that I hope the Scottish and UK governments can reach agreement, as we did in 2014, to allow the democratic wishes of the people of Scotland to be heard and respected,” she is expected to tell the virtual conference.
“But, this much is clear. Democracy must, and will, prevail. The United Kingdom is, after all, a voluntary union of nations.
“Until recently, no one seriously challenged the right of the people in Scotland to choose whether or not they wished to become independent.”