A day after she announced plans to ‘restart’ the debate
Just a day after Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon announced plans to ‘restart’ Scottish independence debate in the coming days, PM Theresa May today said that now is not the time for this.
Downing Street said: “Now is not the time for another divisive independence referendum and there is not appetite for one. The people of Scotland voted decisively in 2014 to remain part of the United Kingdom and that should be respected.”
Sturgeon had told media yesterday that she would again consider another vote on independence for Scotland when the British government offers some certainty over Brexit: “Once we get some clarity, which hopefully we will in the autumn of this year, about the Brexit outcome and the future relationship between the UK and the EU then I will consider again this question of the timing of an independence referendum.
“I’m not going to say more about that in advance of that moment arising.
“But of course over the next couple of weeks we will, I suppose, restart a debate about why independence for Scotland is an opportunity and what those opportunities are. As you know we’ve had a growth commission looking at the economic opportunities of independence.
“Its report will be published in the coming days and I think that’s quite an important moment, because if you think about the last couple of years in the UK it has been very much a debate about how we cope with the damage of Brexit.
“What I think Scotland now has the opportunity to do is look at how we seize the opportunities that lie ahead, so a debate based very much on ambition and hope not a debate that’s based on despair, which is how the Brexit debate so often feels.”
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