On Sunday, Alex Salmond said a second referendum was inevitable with the issue “a question of timing”.
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“After the SNP won 56 of the 59 seats in Scotland in May’s general election, party leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stressed there was “‘no second Scottish independence referendum on the immediate horizon”.
NICOLA Sturgeon has said that the SNP has yet to be decide whether a commitment to a second independence would be in its 2016 election manifesto and that it would be her “ultimate decision”, with party backing. “The question of course is not the inevitability, it is the timing”.
Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond holds the referendum white paper on independence during its launch in Glasgow, Scotland November 26, 2013.
Mr Mundell, Scotland’s only Tory MP, said the UK Government was “getting on with the job” while the Scottish Government was overseeing “a crisis in their centralised police force, facing questions over staff shortages in the NHS and missing their own targets on school class sizes”. Yet the noises are growing from those who want to begin a countdown towards a second referendum.
Mr Salmond also claimed Government spending cuts and the possibility that Britain could vote to leave the EU increased the need for a new poll on Scotland’s future.
“One is the refusal to deliver the Vow [the pledge of extra powers for the Scottish parliament, made by the leaders of the three main Westminster parties in the days before last September’s poll]”.
“Ultimately it will be for the people of Scotland to determine whether there is another referendum but it won’t be for the SNP to tell the people of Scotland what they think on that issue”.
“The third thing emerging comes out of the budget and the welfare bill: instead of getting devo to the max we are getting austerity to the max and that divergent view of what’s right in social terms between Scotland and England is another thing that is moving things towards a second referendum”.
““The 1st Minister has designed distinct we are not organizing an additional referendum, but equally has created it very clear that it is not in the gift of any politician and bash to rule it out indefinitely”, he stated.
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He reiterated Ms Sturgeon’s statement that a second referendum will take place if there is a material change in the political circumstances and Scotland votes for a party promising another referendum in its manifesto.
