Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has raised the prospect of a second independence referendum after the Supreme Court ruled that Scotland does not have a say in triggering Brexit.
The move was prompted on Tuesday after the UK’s highest court ruled that the votes of British MPs would suffice for Article 50 to be triggered and the assemblies in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast had no legal right to challenge it.
“It is becoming clearer by the day that Scotland’s voice is simply not being heard or listened to within the UK and the claims about Scotland being an equal partner are being exposed as nothing more than empty rhetoric,” Sturgeon said in reaction to the ruling.
The leader of pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) said the devolution agreement and the British government’s pledge to uphold a political convention to consult lawmakers in Scotland now were completely worthless.
“It is now crystal clear that the promises made to Scotland by the UK Government about the Sewel Convention and the importance of embedding it in statute were not worth the paper they were written on,” she said.
Sturgeon noted that her government would present its own legislative motion regardless of the ruling and vote on the triggering of the Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which starts the Brexit process.
Sturgeon who had previously warned of UK’s leaving the 28-member bloc, linking it to Scotland’s independence and asserting that a hard Brexit, as proposed by the British Prime Minister Theresa May, “threatens to be economically catastrophic,” and makes a second independence referendum “even more likely” for Scotland.
Scotland rejected independence in 2014, however, Sturgeon says Scots are now more likely to want independence after they voted by an overwhelming majority against independence last June.
On Friday, former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said Scotland will vote to become independent within the next two years.
May has promised to trigger Article 50 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty by the end of March, and said that she believed a final settlement and trade deal could be simultaneously negotiated within the time frame.
In a landmark referendum held on June 23, nearly 52 percent of British voters, amounting to more than 17 million citizens, opted to leave the EU, a decision that sent shock waves throughout the world. – Press TV.
