Matthew Taylor

Sunday shows round-up: Nicola Sturgeon – IndyRef2 decision will be made by the end of 2018

The Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was given the prime interview slot on the Andrew Marr Show this morning. Noting the change in SNP rhetoric since before the 2017 election, Marr pushed Sturgeon for a timeframe as to when Scottish voters could expect to see a second independence referendum:

NS: There is a lot of confusion, this is a complex issue… and people want to see the clarity emerge about the state of the relationship between the UK and the EU. At that point, what I’ve said is that we will look at that and determine at that stage if Scotland should then have the right to choose between whatever that new relationship with the UK is going to be or choosing to be an independent country.

AM: By the relatively early autumn we should have the broad picture of where we’re going… So between October and the end of the year, you will be able to tell us whether or not there is going to be a second referendum

NS: That’s when I will be able to look at that and make a judgement about what the next appropriate steps are for Scotland, and I will then report that to the Scottish Parliament and to the people of Scotland.

Marr confronted Sturgeon with the comments of the Aberdeen North MP Kirsty Blackman, who he quoted as saying ‘I don’t think most people give two hoots about whether Scotland is a member of the union. I very rarely talk about independence in the chamber because I talk about things that matter to the people of Aberdeen’. Sturgeon replied that ‘Independence is not some constitutional abstraction. It is about the living standards, the society, the economy we have and that relationship between how we’re governed and those conditions for Scotland is the important relationship. And that is the point that Kirsty was making’.

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