No 10 dismisses Sturgeon claim on Indyref2 mandate
WHITEHALL has brushed aside the Scottish Government’s insistence that Nicola Sturgeon has a mandate to call for a second independence referendum, arguing Scotland’s Claim of Right does not uphold the First Minister’s position.
Last week, at the SNP conference, Nicola Sturgeon told Theresa May and her colleagues “you will not deny Scotland’s right to choose” in deciding its future in a second referendum.
But the Prime Minister has repeatedly made clear she will not facilitate another Scottish vote in this Parliament.
Asked how the Nationalists could force Mrs May to change her mind, Ian Blackford, the party’s leader at Westminster, said: “The PM talked about the nations of the UK being considered as equals. There’s also the principle of democracy. We have a mandate which is there from the 2016 election, there was a vote that took place in the Scottish Parliament that supported the right of the people of Scotland to vote in a referendum.
“I would simply say to the PM: if you believe in democracy, you cannot stand in the face of the wishes of the Scottish people expressed in a vote in the Scottish Parliament.”
When it was put to a spokesman for the Tory leader that Ms Sturgeon had branded any refusal by Mrs May to meet the SNP administration’s demand for a second independence poll as “anti-democratic,” he replied: “The PM has said on a number of occasions when the referendum was held in Scotland, it was deemed as an exercise that would settle the question for a generation...”
He added: “The PM thinks the focus Nicola Sturgeon should be addressing herself to is things like standards in schools and hospitals.”
The Claim is a historic principle agreed by the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989 and Holyrood in 2012, acknowledging the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government that best suits their needs.
The Conservatives’ 2017 General Election manifesto states: “For a referendum to be fair, legal and decisive, it cannot take place until the Brexit process has played out and it should not take place unless there is public consent for it to happen.”
Scottish Secretary David Mundell and others have made clear that the “playing out” of the Brexit process will take the country beyond the 2022 General Election.