Scottish independence referendum battle is ‘big
distraction’ from Covid, says Gove
Minister responds to suggestion that disregarding a
pro-independence majority is anti-democratic
Libby
Brooks
Sun 9 May
2021 11.55 BST
Speculation
about whether Downing Street will take the Scottish government to court to
prevent it legislating for a second independence referendum is a “massive
distraction” from pandemic recovery, Michael Gove has said.
After the
Scottish National party victory in Thursday’s Holyrood elections, Nicola
Sturgeon signalled her readiness for a constitutional battle, saying her
government would legislate for the vote “and if Boris Johnson wants to stop
that he would have to go to court”.
But Gove
told Sky: “I cannot believe that people who are worried about their jobs, the
extension of furlough, what’s happening to their children’s education … I
cannot believe that the answer to all of these things is a protracted debate on
the constitution.”
Challenged
on whether it was anti-democratic to disregard a pro-independence majority in
the Scottish parliament – made up of SNP and Scottish Green MSPs – Gove
countered: “If you look at the votes cast in constituencies in Scotland, more
people voted for parties that were opposed to an independence referendum than
those that might entertain that prospect.”
The Cabinet
Office minister added that “the SNP did not get a majority in this election and
also, critically, we had a campaign in which all of the party leaders
acknowledge that the single most important thing was dealing with the
pandemic”.
Gove also
claimed that the SNP had not put independence “front and centre in the shop window”
of its campaign, though the pledge to press for a second referendum appeared
prominently in the party’s manifesto and on election literature.
While the
party fell one seat short of a majority after the final results were declared
on Saturday evening, analysts point out that achieving an outright majority is
difficult under Scotland’s proportional voting system, although it was done by
the SNP in 2011.
Pressed
later by the BBC’s Andrew Marr on whether the UK government would take the
Scottish government to court to prevent it passing legislation for an
independence referendum, Gove played down the possibility, saying: “No … but
the thing that is critically important is an acknowledgment on the part of all
of us as political leaders, whatever parties we come from, that the priority at
the moment is not court cases, it’s not independence legislation, it is
recovery from the pandemic.”
Sturgeon,
also speaking to Marr, said “it would be absurd and completely outrageous if it
ever got to that point”. “We stood on a manifesto commitment to firstly – and
this is what I actually agree with much of what Michael Gove was saying – to
continue to steer the country through the Covid pandemic,” she added.
“If we get
to that point [of a court challenge] then Scotland will be in a situation where
it is being told that it has no democratic route to become an independent
country … it would be such a grave and serious and undemocratic situation that
I don’t believe on either side anybody wants it to get to that point.”
She
emphasised that she was not proposing a referendum “in this instant right now”.
Throughout the campaign, Sturgeon said her government would only do so once
“once the Covid crisis has passed”.
Sturgeon
also confirmed she would attend the four-nations recovery summit proposed by
Boris Johnson on Saturday, in a letter that struck a more conciliatory tone
than the previous day when the prime minister called a fresh referendum
“irresponsible and reckless”. Gove also told Marr it was essential to “work
together as Team UK”.
Asked by
Marr whether she was going to be the first minister to deliver independence,
Sturgeon replied: “I hope so. I’ve just won a landslide election and another
five-year term as first minister. I’ve got the energy, the appetite, to get on
with the job, but firstly to get us through Covid, that is my priority.”
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