NICOLA Sturgeon is under pressure to call a second referendum on independence.
In June last year, the SNP leader told MSPs she would set out the Government’s judgment “on the best way forward ... including [their] view on the precise timescale for offering people a choice over the country’s future” when the terms of Brexit were clearer.
During yesterday’s First Minister’s Questions, Scottish Green MSP Patrick Harvie argued that there was “already enough clarity to make a judgment”.
READ MORE: This is why the time has come for the First Minister to act on independence
He told Sturgeon that May’s draft Brexit agreement contained nothing “that protects our social, economic and workplace rights and our environmental rights and protections, or that guarantees the future rights of EU citizens living here or our ability to attract more of the people whom we need for the strength of the economy, the delivery of our public services and the diversity of our society”.
Harvie added: “There is no reference to Scotland in either the Withdrawal Agreement or the absurdly simplistic paper on the future relationship.
“The chaos of Brexit was inevitable, but we need to face up to the equally inevitable fact that Scotland will only get the strong future relationship that we want with Europe – which the overwhelming majority of people in Scotland voted for – if we get out there, campaign for it and persuade people to vote for Scotland to become a full, independent EU member country.”
“The Greens are ready to start that campaign; is the First Minister?” he asked.
Sturgeon said the SNP had started campaigning for independence “a long time ago and has never stopped campaigning for independence”.
She said: “In terms of the precise timing of Scotland having that opportunity to choose, people deserve clarity about what else might unfold over the next period.
“Are we going to have another General Election? Is there going to be a second EU referendum? It is reasonable to wait and allow that to play out over the next few weeks?”
There was pressure too from within her own party.
Writing in The Scotsman yesterday, Kenny Macaskill, the former justice secretary said it was “time for the Scots to have the opportunity to reject” the “economic and social catastrophe” of a hard Brexit.
“The time is now,” he said. “The UK is falling apart and the independence campaign has been energised. Nothing is certain but it’s there to be won and the circumstances have never been better.”
Meanwhile, the Scottish Government confirmed that MSPs would get the chance to vote on May’s proposed deal.
Brexit Secretary Michael Russell said that although the deal is “essentially dead” given that the numbers suggest it won’t make it through the House of Commons, he promised a debate on it in the Scottish Parliament if May manages to get it through a European summit in Brussels on November 25.
Russell said: “We must acknowledge that this deal is unacceptable to Scotland and her citizens.
“Brexit isn’t a better future, it is a backward step into a false and imagined past. That is now crystal clear and every word of this deal proves it to be true.”
He added: “The Scottish Government will bring the deal – if agreed at the Brussels summit on November 25 – to this chamber for a vote before the vote takes place in the House of Commons.
“Our motion will be amendable – that is how a proper parliament should work.”
Scottish Tory spokesman Adam Tomkins branded Russell’s statement to Parliament a “cocktail of contrived grievance from someone who even two years on has never accommodated himself to the democratic will of the British people that we leave the European Union”.
He added: “I voted Remain too, but the difference between Mike Russell and me is that I respect the result of referendums and he does not.
“None of us knows whether yesterday’s draft Withdrawal Agreement will survive intact.
“Getting a deal through a fractious House of Commons was always going to be more difficult than getting a deal with Brussels.”
However, there was support for the vote, which would be largely symbolic, from Scottish Labour and the Scottish Greens.
MSP Ross Greer said his party would work “to try and present as close as possible to a united voice from this Parliament on behalf of Scotland”.
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