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Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish prime minister, on Sunday paved the way for a pro-independence confrontation with Boris Johnson as early as next year, saying he “desperately hoped” Covid-19 had withdrawn by then.
Sturgeon’s Scottish national party fell to a 129-seat general majority seat in the Holyrood parliamentary election, but said its 64-seat launch represented a “staggered” victory.
With the support of the pro-independence Greens, with eight seats, there is a renewed parliamentary majority for a second referendum on Scotland that separates itself from the rest of the UK.
Sturgeon, speaking on the BBC’s Andrew Marr program, reiterated his commitment to re-run the 2014 independence referendum in the first half of his parliamentary term, if Covid-19 had come under control.
Asked if these conditions could be met in the spring of 2022, according to some scientists’ predictions, she said, “I desperately hope these predictions are correct.”
He said he would “work for this time scale” of a referendum in the first half of parliament and that he would “not rule out” the legislation early next year. Johnson and his ministers say the UK will take much longer to recover from the pandemic.
Johnson has said that talking about “tearing our country apart” would be “irresponsible and reckless” and will resist a second pro-independence vote, which would threaten the integrity of the UK and its own presidency.
But Michael Gove, the 314-year-old cabinet minister tasked with preserving political union, was anxious to avoid giving the impression that the UK government would use strong arm tactics to block a referendum.
Gove told Marr’s demonstration that the UK government would not go to the Supreme Court to try to block a pro-independence vote, adding: “We are not going close.”
Under the Scottish law of 1998 which created the Holyrood parliament, matters relating to the constitution are “reserved” for the UK parliament. Johnson argues that Westminster should pass a second ballot.
Still, Gove and Johnson are anxious to avoid saying explicitly that they will use these legal powers. SNP’s John Swinney has already accused the Prime Minister of acting like a “gentleman” over Scotland.
Gove, who is working on a new cabinet base in Glasgow next week, said: “The priority at the moment is not court cases or independence legislation, but the recovery from the pandemic.”
The Johnson administration argues that recovery will take time. Gove highlighted the huge accumulation of NHS operations and the need for a “recovery” program for schoolchildren as priorities.
The strategy is to argue that Sturgeon is acting irresponsibly by focusing on constitutional issues, hopefully going back to the time when Edinburgh and Westminster ended up closing their horns in a referendum.
Other parties, instead of the UK government, could take legal action if they believed Sturgeon was exceeding their constitutional powers. The Prime Minister has always said that she was in favor of a legal referendum, not of a “wild” version of this type that is seen in Catalonia.
Sturgeon said it would be “absurd” for the Johnson administration to use the courts to “overthrow Scottish democracy”. This measure would lead to “a very bad place.”
“The UK government knows that if we come to a situation where this is being determined in the courts, what the UK government argues is that there is no democratic path for Scotland towards independence,” he said. .
Meanwhile, Johnson has invited leaders of decentralized assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to join him at a “Team UK” summit to discuss the recovery from the pandemic.
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