UK media reports today say that the First Minister will call a second independence referendum in the autumn, according to the Secretary of State for Scotland.
David Mundell made the announcement in Aberdeen this week at the Scottish Conservative Conference.
He said to party members that Ms Sturgeon was “already back to her old tricks”, despite the SNP’s election losses last June.
The SNP won the last election in Scotland, but their vote share fell from 2015 after the FM told voters “this election is not about independence”.
Ms Sturgeon decided to focus all her energy on trying to get the best possible deal for Scotland from the fallout of an unwanted Brexit. Despite strenuous efforts put in by the Scottish (and Welsh) governments, the UK executive are still on course to take us all out of the Single Market and Customs Union under some pretty harsh conditions regardless the massive losses to the Scottish economy predicted by the UK’s own Impact Analysis.
The mood music coming from Westminster is that these are losses the UK can afford to shoulder. Many of the UK govt’s own ministers may well feel adequately cushioned from the fallout of their decisions, but what of the living standards of the rest of us? What of people’s jobs?
With the Labour Party still in a state of confusion about what to do, though this week they appear to be slowly getting ever closer to the SNP position of remaining within the Single Market. They appear to be signalling that this is what they want but they don’t want to adhere to the same trade regulations as the rest of Europe. This is where the Tories are ahead of them in that they understand the EU will not concede this ground. They can’t, or it would undermine the whole integrity of the Single Market.
Image appears to be everything with the Labour leadership these days and Jeremy Corbyn desperately wants to be seen to have crafted his own unique position on Brexit. Trouble is, there are only so many positions available and this current stance has all the hallmarks of all of Labour’s others, in that it is painfully short on substance. All headline and no detail.
After failing to put any meat on the bones of his Plan A yesterday, the BBC asked what his Plan B was, Corbyn looked almost lost for a moment before warily responding: “Plan B is to make sure Plan A works.” His remarks were quickly seized upon by James O’Brien of LBC who said the Labour Party’s latest position on Brexit, though marginally better than the Tories, was still really just a different-flavoured “porridge of nonsense.”
With the Tories still split and privately slugging it out over whether they want to go after a bad deal or a really bad deal and Labour, despite having 2 years to sit and think through what it is they actually want, are still coming up short on detail.
It’s against this backdrop that a new case for independence may well be made. The future’s never certain, but it’s certainly better if you’re in a position to be making your own.
Scottish Journals 