A PEOPLE’S vote on Brexit won’t guarantee “salvation for Scotland” Nicola Sturgeon has warned.
While the First Minister said she wouldn’t stand in the way of a second vote on Britain’s membership of the EU, she said there needed to be clarity on what would happen if Scotland voted to remain while the rest of the UK voted to leave.
LibDem leader Willie Rennie raised the issue at First Minister’s Questions in Holyrood yesterday.
“Our country is facing economic meltdown, but the First Minister is frozen with indecision,” he said.
“For months I have encouraged her to back a people’s vote on Brexit, but she just cannot make up her mind. Then I hear this week that she has delayed another independence referendum.
"That is great news, but I wonder whether the First Minister believes in anything anymore. I want to encourage her. I will be with her if she commits her Government to backing a people’s vote. Time is running out. Will she do that in these desperate days?”
Sturgeon said she had “made it clear” that the SNP would not “stand in the way of that”.
“So perhaps Willie Rennie should learn to start taking yes for an answer,” the First Minister added.
She continued: “As I said the last time that he raised the question, it would be interesting to hear Willie Rennie address what happens if, yet again, just as in 2016, Scotland votes to remain and the rest of the United Kingdom votes to leave.
“Is it Willie Rennie’s proposition that Scotland should simply be ignored all over again? Is it really Willie Rennie’s position that the only people’s vote on the European Union that counts for nothing is the Scottish people’s vote? If he can address that question, we might make some progress.”
Rennie said the First Minister’s party no longer agreed with her: “Former Conservative cabinet ministers, senior Labour politicians and now the whole SNP council group in Aberdeenshire have backed a people’s vote,” he argued. “In supporting a people’s vote, one SNP councillor said that the only way out of this is to take it back to the people. He is right, is he not?”
The First Minister said Scotland needed the “option” of independence: “If there is a people’s vote, I will be perfectly happy with that, but it does not guarantee salvation for Scotland, as we saw in 2016.
“Willie Rennie is right about one thing. It is really serious. The Tories are leading Scotland to disaster. In the past few days, we have heard warnings of recession, medicine shortages and pressure on food supplies, and we have seen the cancellation of a clinical trial at the Golden Jubilee hospital, and that makes the point clearer than ever.
“Scotland needs the option of independence, because only independence guarantees that those things cannot be imposed on us against our will, so the sooner Willie Rennie wants to back that the better.”
The First Minister was also pushed on the issue by LibDem leader Vince Cable. In a letter to Sturgeon he called on her to allow her MPs to break the Westminster “impasse”.
“We need the SNP’s MPs to vote with us to secure this victory, as the Parliamentary arithmetic is such that abstentions just won’t do,” he said.
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