I’ll defy Sturgeon’s threats and stand up for the Union, promises Truss
TORY leadership frontrunner Liz Truss will frame herself as the ‘save the Union’ candidate by ruling out SNP demands for a second independence referendum.
The Foreign Secretary – rated by bookmakers as 90 per cent likely to be the next Prime Minister – will claim that growing up in Paisley makes her better placed than her remaining rival Rishi Sunak to reverse the Conservative Party’s years of political decline in Scotland.
Vowing last night that there will be ‘no second independence referendum on my watch’, Ms Truss said: ‘Scottish Nationalists accepted that the 2014 referendum was a once-in-a-generation opportunity, and I will hold them to that. You cannot just keep having polls until you get the result you want. It is undemocratic for Scotland, and for our United Kingdom.’
She added: ‘Any independence referendum would need to be authorised by the Westminster parliament. If I become Prime Minister, I would not grant that authority. We are in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis and it is an increasingly uncertain time for the world, so the SNP should be focusing on delivering for the Scottish people and fixing the mistakes they have made in policing, education and beyond.
‘As Prime Minister, I will hold them to account. No longer will they be able to neglect the needs of the Scottish people and blame it on Westminster in their pursuit of independence.’
This tough stance comes as Ms
Truss welcomes former leadership contender Tom Tugendhat to her
‘No second independence referendum on my watch’
team – and as her staunch supporter Nadine Dorries today unleashes a blistering attack on Mr Sunak.
In a no-holds-barred article for The Mail on Sunday, the Culture Secretary defends her controversial decision to contrast Ms Truss’s £4.50 earrings with Mr Sunak’s £450 Prada shoes. She admits that this caused ‘a bit of a storm’ but dismisses the idea that she was being ‘anti-aspirational’, declaring: ‘I would never wish to suppress anyone’s desire to improve their lot.’
Ms Dorries, who insists that Mr Sunak had long been plotting to oust Boris Johnson, writes: ‘No, my Twitter comment ran much deeper. I wanted to highlight Rishi’s misguided sartorial style in order to alert Tory members not to be taken in by appearances in the way that happened to many of us who served with the Chancellor in Cabinet.’
She then makes an extraordinary jibe at Mr Sunak’s height (5ft 7in), saying: ‘The assassin’s gleaming smile, his gentle voice and even his diminutive stature had many of us well and truly fooled.’ In a scathing verdict on Mr Sunak’s alleged plotting, she adds: ‘His actions made Michael Gove’s betrayal of Boris Johnson during the 2016 leadership campaign appear like a rank amateur rehearsing for the role of Brutus in a village-hall play.’
Meanwhile, Ms Truss’s leadership ambitions have also been endorsed by leading anti-woke Tory MP Sir John Hayes, who hailed her ‘character and determination’.
Speaking to the MoS, Sir John – chairman of the influential Common Sense Group of Tory MPs and peers – singled out Ms Truss’s clear answer at a hustings in Leeds last week when she defended the return of single-sex toilets in schools after the introduction of same-sex spaces during the pandemic.
But he also saluted her belief in Britain: ‘What impresses me about Liz is that she is unprepared to accept the orthodoxy of decline. She believes, as I do, that Britain’s greatest years can lie ahead. This confident patriotism is essential in an increasingly challenging and uncertain world.’ Sir John, who backed Suella Braverman and Kemi Badenoch earlier in the leadership race, declined to criticise Mr Sunak, saying: ‘I rate him as a very capable politician.’ However, he also told the MoS: ‘There is something particular about Liz Truss that could make her a very great Prime Minister.’