MICHAEL Gove has said he was congratulated on Sauchiehall Street over the Tories' election result and thanked by a voter who "didn't want a second independence referendum just now".
The Cabinet Office minister revealed the encounters with passers-by in a briefing with Scottish political journalists this afternoon.
Gove said he went to Marks and Spencer's and to Waterstone's on Sunday afternoon as he walked down Glasgow's main shopping street.
"I went for a stroll, popped into Marks and Spencer's and to Waterstone's and I was very pleasantly surprised when I was just off Sauchiehall Street, towards Central Station a very nice guy stopped his car, got out when I was on the phone, and I was worried he was going to upbraid me.
"He came over and he congratulated the Tories on their result and said he didn't want a referendum anytime soon and he offered his strong support for our concentration on recovery.
"So to Steve from Glasgow I just want to say thank you very much for your kind words and Steve spoke to a fair number of people I spoke to yesterday."
Gove - who has been charged by the Prime Minister with stopping independence - is in Scotland for a few days this week meeting organisations and individuals in civic society.
He refused to say that a party which won an election had a right to implement its manifesto and suggested that the SNP's landslide victory did not mean that voters supported a second independence referendum.
All constituency MSPs elected in Glasgow last Thursday are from the SNP.
The city supported independence in the 2014 referendum and also backed remaining in the EU in 2016.
The Scottish Conservatives were re-elected as the main opposition party in Holyrood with 31 MSPs, the same as in 2016.
During an interview on Sunday with the BBC's Andrew Marr, Gove claimed that if he walked down Sauchiehall Street in Glasgow, passers-by wouldn’t ask him about a Supreme Court legal challenge - in reference to a possible legal challenge to the Scottish Government over Holyrood legislation to hold a new vote.
The SNP won an historic fourth term in government at the election, netting 64 MSPs while the Greens tally came to eight – returning an independence majority of eight in Holyrood, the largest since devolution.
Both parties included a commitment in their manifestos to hold a new referendum within the new parliamentary term.
In her victory speech on Saturday, the First Minister declared that people voted for a second independence referendum and declared it “the will of the people”.
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