The Guardian / UK: Nicola Sturgeon has abandoned her demands for a new independence referendum before the Brexit deal is signed, after her party lost a string of seats to pro-union parties in the general election.
Admitting she needed to “reset” her referendum strategy, the first minister told Holyrood she accepted there was no widespread support in Scotland for a second vote on independence before the UK leaves the EU.
Sturgeon said her priority now was to focus on getting the best Brexit deal possible, leaving the timescale for staging a new referendum deliberately vague. She implied she wanted to hold it before the next Holyrood election in 2021, adding that her party had a clear mandate to do so at some point.
Speaking to MSPs, Sturgeon said: “Instead, we will – in good faith – redouble our efforts and put our shoulder to the wheel in seeking to influence the Brexit talks in a way that protects Scotland’s interests.”
The Scottish National party lost 21 of its 56 Westminster seats at the election, where support for the party fell by 477,000 votes from the 2015 general election.
With the Scottish Conservatives putting their anti-independence stance at the centre of its campaign, the SNP’s Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, and former first minister Alex Salmond lost their seats to the Tories in one of the most shocking election nights suffered by the SNP.
Sturgeon told MSPs that Scotland’s voters had rejected her calls in March for a fresh referendum by spring 2019, so she was abandoning that timetable and dropping her plans to introduce a referendum bill before Christmas. Her government needed to “to take stock and refresh” she added.
“My responsibility as first minister is to build as much unity and consensus as possible,” she told MSPs, urging her opponents to join forces to press for a much better EU deal. “We face a Brexit that we didn’t vote for and in a form more extreme than any of us could have imagined one year ago,” she said.
The first minister said she now expected to come back to the Scottish parliament to discuss her proposals for a further referendum in autumn 2018, including possible legislation – assuming the terms of the UK’s Brexit deal were clear at that point.
“At the end of this period of negotiation with the EU – likely to be around next autumn – when the terms of Brexit will be clearer, we will come back to parliament to set out our judgment on the best way forward at that time, including our view on the precise timescale for offering people a choice over the country’s future,” she said.
Sturgeon’s revised timescale greatly reduces the time available to stage a new referendum before the next Scottish parliamentary elections in May 2021. Passing an enabling bill, agreeing the necessary legal arrangements with the UK government and then allowing at least six months to hold that referendum, would take at least 18 months, unless the UK government at that time agrees to support one taking place quickly in the months following Brexit.
There was open dissent, however, from the Scottish Green party, whose seven votes at Holyrood are needed to give Sturgeon the necessary parliamentary majority for a referendum bill.
Patrick Harvie, the Scottish Greens’ parliamentary leader, said dropping the original referendum timetable would make it impossible for Scotland to stay inside the single market after Brexit, even though 62% of Scottish voters backed remain last year.
“With this announcement the people of Scotland face being denied the right to make their own choice until long after we leave the EU,” he said. “In fact, the people of Scotland will be the only ones in Europe not to have their say on Brexit under the timeline outlined by the first minister.”
Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, said Sturgeon ought to cancel all plans for a referendum during this parliament, and take responsibility for misreading the mood of the Scottish electorate.
“She appears to be in denial about her mistakes over this last year and, as a result, is leaking credibility and confidence in her leadership by the hour,” Davidson said. “She now claims to be putting the referendum to one side. She should just give the country some certainty and take it off the table for the rest of this parliament at least.”
Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, said Sturgeon had been deaf to the electorate’s message. “The truth is the threat of an unwanted second independence referendum is dead. And this didn’t happen because Nicola Sturgeon wanted it to; the people of Scotland have taken that decision for her.
“But the first minister is digging her heels in, putting her fingers in her ears, and pressing on regardless. She’s not listening. The people of Scotland sent her a clear message at the general election: get on with the day job.”
Sturgeon has slowly but deliberately softened her demands for that referendum over recent months, after a series of opinion polls showed diminishing support for that vote and for the SNP. Sturgeon’s own popularity suffered too, with one poll in May showing her popularity had slumped by 28 points to -4 since September 2016.
The first minister had surprised her opponents in March by calling on Theresa May to allow Holyrood to stage a second referendum between autumn 2018 and spring 2019, insisting her party had an undeniable mandate to stage that vote.
May rejected that call three days later, insisting she would not consider allowing a new referendum until after the Brexit process was complete, saying “now is not the time”.
As Sturgeon spoke, the Scottish National party launched a new campaign website to again build support for a referendum, called mobilise.scot. She told MSPs her party and the broader independence movement now faced the challenge of building support for leaving the UK.
