SNP leader attempts to quash rebels with IndyRef2

Telegraph

5 days ago

The SNP leader has attempted to quash party rebels by dangling the prospects of a second independence referendum.
John Swinney, the First Minister, said that the SNP winning an outright majority at Holyrood should be 'good enough' to force Sir Keir Starmer to drop his opposition to allowing a separation vote.
He argued a precedent had been set at the 2011 election, when Alex Salmond led the SNP to a majority win and then-prime minister David Cameron authorised a referendum.
But a former Cabinet minister in the Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon governments said Mr Swinney was 'living in cloud cuckoo land' given the current level of public support for the SNP.
Alex Neil, a former Scottish health secretary, said backing for the SNP would have to increase by 50 per cent in less than a year for the party to achieve a majority and this was 'almost impossible'.
Successive UK governments have repeatedly turned down SNP calls for a second referendum, with the UK Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that only Westminster can allow another poll.
Speaking alongside Donald Trump at the US president's Turnberry resort in Ayrshire on Monday, Sir Keir accused Mr Swinney of 'the politics of yesteryear' and said the four home nations were stronger together.
Sir Keir said: 'I think that at a time like this, when it's quite clear that there's uncertainty and volatility around the world, the strength of the United Kingdom together is very important for all four nations, very important for Scotland, and that should be our priority.
'That should be our focus, not on the politics which feels like the politics of yesteryear now at a time like this, and I think that the First Minister should probably focus more on his delivery in Scotland than on his constitutional issues and we might have a better health service in Scotland.'
Mr Trump said he recalled there was a 'restriction' in 2014 'like 50 or 75 years before you could take another vote because a country can't go through that too much'. He added that he had heard 'great things' about Mr Swinney.
Sir Keir also said last month that he could not imagine another referendum being staged while he is prime minister and an SNP victory in the May 2026 election would not change his mind.
When she was first minister, Ms Sturgeon claimed that there should be another referendum if there was a majority of independence-supporting MSPs, including SNP and Green members.
But Mr Swinney's new benchmark of an outright SNP majority is much more difficult to achieve under Holyrood's electoral system, which is partly based on proportional representation.
After taking over last year, he initially won praise for overseeing a recovery in the SNP's fortunes following the troubled final months of Ms Sturgeon's premiership and Mr Yousaf's chaotic tenure.
But internal grumbling about his leadership has increased since last month's Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse Scottish Parliament by-election, when Labour pulled off a shock victory and the SNP vote fell by 17 points.
It was reported last month that he risked facing a leadership challenge at the SNP conference in October unless he comes up with a new strategy to achieve independence.
He now plans to table a motion to be debated at the Aberdeen conference arguing that the SNP winning outright in the May 2026 election is the mechanism for triggering another referendum.
'Democratic future'
The First Minister told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme: 'It's fundamentally a democratic issue here that people in Scotland, in a voluntary union, must be able to choose their own democratic future, and that was accepted after the SNP won a majority in the Scottish Parliament on our own in 2011.
'I'm making the point that having established that precedent, we must be in a position to be able to give the people of Scotland the choice about the constitutional future.'
Mr Swinney argued that 'a generation has now passed' since the 2014 referendum, with a million new voters added to the electoral roll.
Calling for a rerun, he said that 'the way to do that is the way we did it in 2011, which is to elect a majority of SNP MSPs to the Scottish Parliament'.
A senior SNP source told the Daily Record that a combined SNP-Green majority should be enough for another referendum but the experience of the past four years showed 'this is not going to happen'.
But Mr Neil, who last month called for Mr Swinney to be 'replaced immediately', said: 'To win an overall majority the SNP would have to get about 45 per cent of the vote. The SNP is currently at about 30 per cent of the vote and has been stuck at that figure for some time.
'It's almost an impossible task for it to increase its vote share by 50 per cent in the next 10 months given the last 10 years of policy delivery and poor performance under Sturgeon, Yousaf and Swinney.' He said Mr Swinney's announcement was an attempt to silence his critics at the SNP conference.
Rachael Hamilton, the Scottish Tory deputy leader, said: 'John Swinney is like a broken record. In a bid to silence internal critics of his weak leadership, he has thrown diehard nationalists some more red meat on the one issue they all agree on: independence.'
Dame Jackie Baillie, the Scottish Labour deputy leader, said: 'This SNP government has lost its way and ran out of ideas - while one in six Scots suffer on an NHS waiting list.
'Despite that, John Swinney can't end his own obsession with division, and today has confirmed he'll put Scots second to appease his own party.'