After spending the past few months declaring that a second Scottish independence referendum is highly likely as a result of the UK government’s plans for a ‘hard Brexit’, this morning Nicola Sturgeon bit the bullet and vowed to ensure Scotland has an independence referendum at the end of the Brexit process. In a speech at Bute House, the SNP leader said she had tried ‘really hard’ to find an agreement but had been met with a ‘brick wall of intransigence’ by Theresa May.
Sturgeon’s plans will begin to fall into place next week when she will seek a Section 30 order for a second independence referendum and ask Scottish parliament to vote in favour. Answering questions from the press, Sturgeon said she was confident that she could win an independence referendum as the economics of staying in the UK post-Brexit are ‘significantly more challenging’ than in 2014. As for remaining in the EU, Sturgeon said her party would set out its position in more detail in the near future.
While the appetite for a second referendum is low in Scotland (with the majority of Scots not in favour of a second referendum within the next year or two), Sturgeon’s decision to announce her plans now will have put the unionists on the back foot. While the Nationalists already have the beginning of an independence campaign (with a referendum site to boot), the pro-union movement is not yet match fit and won’t be ready to go into campaign mode so soon.
As for Theresa May, the Prime Minister’s main focus will now be working out just when a referendum ‘at the end of the Brexit process’ should be. The SNP will hope to have this by 2019. While the government is unlikely to block it, they will be keen to push it back as far as possible. In a statement, a government spokesman has hit out at Sturgeon’s announcement — calling another referendum ‘divisive’ with the potential to ’cause huge economic uncertainty at the worst possible time’.
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