Nicola Sturgeon sets stage for next chapter of
Scottish independence fight
Boris Johnson tries to kill nationalist push with
kindness, urging shared effort to recover from pandemic.
Despite failing to win a majority Scottish First
Minister Nicola Sturgeon reiterated demands for a new independence referendum.
BY EMILIO
CASALICCHIO, ESTHER WEBBER AND ANDREW MCDONALD
May 8, 2021
9:06 pm
https://www.politico.eu/article/nicola-sturgeon-scotland-independence-referendum-snp-election/
LONDON —
Nicola Sturgeon gave up hope of securing a majority for her party in Scotland —
but not of a referendum on independence.
The routes
to hitting the 65 seats needed for an outright win closed off late Saturday
afternoon when it became clear her Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) had failed
to gain West Aberdeenshire from the Conservatives in the Scottish Parliament
election.
But a
pro-independence majority is all but guaranteed when Members of the Scottish
Parliament (MSPs) from the SNP and Greens are tallied together, and First
Minister Sturgeon sounded bullish on Saturday night. She said British Prime
Minister Boris Johnson had no reason to deny Scotland another referendum.
“In no way
can a referendum be described as just a demand of me or of the SNP,” she said
in a speech. “It is a commitment made to the people by a clear majority of the
MSPs that have been elected to our national parliament. It is the will of the
country. And given that outcome, there is simply no democratic justification
whatsoever for Boris Johnson or indeed for anyone else seeking to block the
right of the people of Scotland to choose our own future.”
Sturgeon
added: “If the Tories make such an attempt they won’t be placing themselves in
opposition to the SNP, they will be standing in direct opposition to the will
of the Scottish people.”
Her
comments show that the independence debate will continue to dominate Scottish
politics and to call into question the future of the U.K. The government in
Westminster will argue that the SNP’s failure to win a majority should put an
end to demands for a fresh referendum. But that will cut no ice with the SNP.
Johnson tried to kill off the fight with kindness,
with a focus on how the U.K. nations can work together to build back after the
coronavirus pandemic.
In a letter
to Sturgeon, he said the vaccine rollout showed the “team U.K. in action” and
stressed that the economic response would continue to require a four-nation
project. He invited Sturgeon, as well as leaders in Wales and Northern Ireland,
to a summit about “our shared challenges and how we can work together in the
coming months and years to overcome them.”
The message
was clear: An independence referendum is not up for debate. “Our focus is on
recovery and recovery from the pandemic,” a U.K. government official said. “The
incoming Scottish government must focus on that too.”
Asked what
Johnson might do if the SNP tries to fight Westminster in the courts about
whether a referendum should be allowed, as Sturgeon has threatened, the
official said: “We’ll just have to see what they do. We’d hope they focus on
other issues.”
Mandate questioned
Government outriders
made the argument that a failure to win an outright majority had killed off the
SNP’s independence demands. “I don’t think the SNP has a mandate for an
independence referendum,” Scottish Conservative MP Andrew Bowie told the BBC
after the result became clear.
Another MP
said the Conservative campaign message, urging voters to back the Tories to
deprive the SNP of a majority, had been vindicated. Luke Graham, a former
Downing Street adviser on the union, said the SNP’s failure to win a majority
would mean “the momentum for a second referendum is reduced.”
After the
West Aberdeenshire result came in, SNP officials were quick to brief that talk
of an outright majority was always overblown.
To be sure,
the electoral system in Scotland is proportional, giving smaller parties a
leg-up at the expense of the dominance of a few. “It was always kind of stacked
against us from the start,” one SNP official lamented.
In the end,
it was tactical voting by pro-union supporters that appeared to deprive
Sturgeon of an outright majority. In the SNP’s top target seat, Labour-held
Dumbarton, a big swing from the Conservatives translated into a larger majority
for the incumbent, as Tory voters held their noses and backed the party most
likely to defeat the nationalists.
In
Eastwood, a three-way marginal between the two unionist parties and the SNP
turned into a relatively comfortable win for former Scottish Conservative
leader Jackson Carlaw. The Labour vote there dropped by around 4,000, with the
Tories the main beneficiary.
Alex
Salmond’s Alba Party aimed to win tactical support in party list votes from
independence supporters who voted SNP on the constituency ballot, but it looks
unlikely to win any seats. The former Scottish first minister blamed his
successor, Sturgeon, for deciding not to encourage her supporters to vote Alba
or Green on the list and therefore letting unionist opponents in “through the
back door.”
The SNP
official quoted above noted the irony in the fact that while Salmond was a
leading champion of tactical voting, the anti-independence camp appeared to
have used it more effectively.
“It looks
like unionists have done the tactical voting thing better than us,” the
official said.
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