Ms Sturgeon said the SNP’s rise was being driven by the government’s failure to deliver on a promise of more powers for Scotland as well as pushing ahead with austerity and renewing Britain’s nuclear weapons arsenal despite opposition in Scotland, where it is based.
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“It is for others to decide whether you then make it a free vote. People clearly exercised their vote in the ballot box anyway”.
Sipping coffee in a cafe, 43-year-old Michael Roy said Corbyn was probably a plus for Scottish Labour but he doubted the new leader could revive the party’s fortunes.Ms Sturgeon said she disagreed with Mr Sillars that a separate currency would have solved the Yes campaign’s problems but did not propose an alternative, saying: “That’s always going to be a hard issue”.She said: “The Labour Party here has been doing something that we don’t do in Scotland, and that’s win elections”.
“Over the past few years in Scotland we’ve had a Government focused on the independence debate, with a two and a half year campaign that ended last September and who’ve spent the year since that referendum mourning the referendum result instead of delivering for the people of Scotland”.
She was asked whether Labour figures should have a free vote on the issue similar to that allowed in 1979 devolution referendum in which there were leading figures on each side of the argument.
Pressed on whether Labour MPs or MSPs should be able to argue for independence, she said: “Yes”.
Ms Dugdale said she wanted to lead “a more autonomous” Scottish Labour party but remain part of a “UK-wide Labour movement that I’m so proud to be a part of”.
“I want people who voted both Yes and No to see that the Labour Party is the vehicle for progressive change in this country, which is why I am completely comfortable and, in fact, would encourage people who have voted Yes in the past to take a look at our party and see that it is changing”.
“The total confusion over Labour party policy has spread from Jeremy Corbyn to Kezia Dugdale”.
Ms Sturgeon is also understood to have restated the Scottish Government’s desire to be informed about the European Union negotiation process and to be given an opportunity to influence the process, where appropriate.
Kezia Dugdale, who was visiting Cardiff, replaced Jim Murphy in August after Labour lost all but one of its 40 Scottish seats at the general election. Corbyn will have to grapple with an issue about which he has said very little to date: how much power Scotland should have to run its own affairs.
Sturgeon has also urged Corbyn to show his party will put workers’ rights in Scotland first and drop opposition to moves to devolve powers over trade union and employment law.
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In an in-depth interview for Good Morning Scotland on Sunday, she said that some of the political consequences had been “profoundly depressing”, and the party still had a lot to learn from the referendum experience.
