NICOLA Sturgeon will renew the case for Scottish independence this week as the findings of the SNP’s economic Growth Commission are revealed.
The First Minister said the publication of the document – which is said to run to 400 pages and is expected to be unveiled on Friday – would offer the opportunity for a debate on Scotland’s future based on “ambition and hope”.
The commission, chaired by former SNP MSP Andrew Wilson, was set up in 2016 to look at policy options for an independent Scotland, including ways of growing the economy.
It will make recommendations on the monetary policy for an independent Scotland as well as the range of transitional costs and benefits associated with independence.
Reports have suggested the commission will back the creation of an independent Scottish currency after concern the policy of keeping sterling was a weakness in the Yes side’s argument in 2014.
Asked about the timing of a second independence referendum, Sturgeon told ITV’s Peston on Sunday: “Once we get some clarity, which hopefully we will in the autumn of this year, about the Brexit outcome and the future relationship between the UK and the EU then I will consider again this question of the timing of an independence referendum.
“I’m not going to say more about that in advance of that moment arising. But, of course, over the next couple of weeks we will, I suppose, restart a debate about why independence for Scotland is an opportunity and what those opportunities are.
“As you know we’ve had a Growth Commission looking at the economic opportunities of independence. Its report will be published in the coming days and I think that’s quite an important moment because if you think about the last couple of years in the UK it has been very much a debate about how we cope with the damage of Brexit.
“What I think Scotland now has the opportunity to do is to look at how we seize the opportunities that lie ahead – so a debate based very much on ambition and hope, not a debate that’s based on despair, which is how the Brexit debate so often feels.”
The First Minister repeated her assertion that the SNP would not be a block to a second referendum on the terms of the Brexit deal, and said there was still time for the UK and Scottish governments to secure an agreement on vital Brexit legis-lation after the Scottish Parliament voted to withhold consent for the EU Withdrawal Bill.
“We’ve set out clearly what that would require and if the Westminster Government has the will to reach an agreement then certainly it can be done,” Sturgeon said.
Her intervention came two weeks after tens of thousands of Yes supporters took to the streets of Glasgow in the biggest public rally in the city since the demonstration against the Iraq war in 2003. The timing of a second independence referendum has dominated the SNP’s depute leadership contest.
The announcement of the report’s publication and the message that it will be used to restate and update the case for independence will be welcomed by many SNP members, who will gather for their party’s conference in Aberdeen next month.
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