Nicola Sturgeon has signalled she may drop plans for a new Scottish independence referendum after her party suffered its most significant electoral setback in decades.
The first minister admitted that her call for a second referendum immediately after Brexit was a key factor in the Scottish National party’s loss of 21 of 56 Westminster seats, including seats held by the architect of her party’s rise to power, Alex Salmond, and the party’s deputy leader, Angus Robertson.
In a statement at Bute House, Sturgeon said she needed more time to reflect on the consequences of the election before deciding whether to press on with her quest for a referendum soon after Brexit.
“Undoubtedly the issue of an independence referendum was a factor in this election result, but I think there were other factors as well,” she said, citing Brexit as another key issue.
“I said I’m going to reflect carefully on the result and going to take some time to do that. I have now gone 36 hours without sleep and I don’t think those are the conditions to rush to judgments or decisions.”
Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders in Scotland called on Sturgeon to drop her plans for another referendum, which she had originally wanted held by spring 2019 but has since accepted may not be held until 2020 or 2021. The
Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader who led her party to its best result – 13 seats – in Scotland since 1983, said Sturgeon’s decision in March to call for a fresh referendum was “a massive political miscalculation” since so many voters had punished the SNP for doing so.
Davidson sidestepped questions on Theresa May’s far more significant error in calling a general election she then failed to win outright, but said: “What people do expect, right now, is the SNP gives Scotland a break. Simply put, Scotland has had its fill.”
In a clear hint about her likely decision on her referendum policy, Sturgeon repeatedly stressed that she believed the hung parliament and instability that could entail put her under an obligation to seek consensus with other parties at Westminster.
Speaking before the Tories and Democratic Unionist party said they would work together, she said the SNP, which has 35 Westminster seats after gaining 37% of the vote, would seek to build a progressive alliance with Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party to lock May out of office.
The SNP remains the third largest party in the Commons, presenting Sturgeon with a significant political opportunity to influence votes at Westminster or work alongside Labour.
However, despite a heavy focus on Brexit, Sturgeon has failed to win sufficient popular support for either a second referendum or independence since last June’s EU referendum. The SNP’s heavy losses on Thursday allow her to delay that indefinitely while saving face.
The SNP “would play its part in finding the right way forward for the whole of the UK,” she said, and would open talks about agreeing some form of progressive coalition at Westminster. “It is needed more than ever,” she said.
In a clear hint she is anxious to win over anti-independence voters, Sturgeon added that she was obliged as first minister to govern for the whole of Scotland.
There was “a desire to bring people together and find a way forward that was rooted in consensus. I recognise my responsibilities as first minister to play my part in that and for that to be very much in the forefront of my mind”.
Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, whose party won an unexpected seven Westminster seats, including regaining Gordon Brown’s old seat of Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, said there was no prospect that Corbyn would agree to a formal alliance with the SNP.
“He has said no coalitions, no deals and no pacts,” Dugdale said. “What will happen is, if we are in a position where we can put forward a proper budget, that Labour budget will be presented, serving up the Labour manifesto. The SNP will either have to back it or walk away. If they walk away, they will be responsible for the return of a Tory prime minister.”
The Lib Dems won four seats and narrowly missed a fifth, North East Fife, by a wafer-thin margin of just two votes.
Willie Rennie, the Scottish Lib Dem leader, urged Sturgeon to withdraw a Holyrood motion calling for the referendum. ”I agree with the first minister that now is the time to bring the country together again and there should be unanimity for this in the parliament,” he said.
Sturgeon said she was devastated by the defeats of Robertson and Salmond, the former SNP leader and first minister who had been her mentor for more than 30 years. Salmond was “without a shadow of a doubt a giant of modern Scottish politics, someone who had devoted his life to serving this country,” she said.
An ITV News journalist said the popular vote in Scotland, where the pro-UK Conservative, Labour and Lib Dem parties won nearly 1.7m votes against the 978,000 cast for the SNP, showed that the anti-independence vote had been in the majority. She said that interpretation “had a degree of force in it”.
John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister and a former SNP leader, had earlier hinted at Sturgeon’s review of the independence referendum. The party had a 13% drop in its share of the popular vote, losing nearly half a million votes compared with 2015.
Swinney told BBC Radio Scotland that Sturgeon’s quest for a second referendum was a “significant motivator” in those defeats, and in the heavy cuts in the majorities of surviving SNP MPs. The SNP would “have to be attentive to that”, he said.
Other senior SNP figures disagreed, arguing Sturgeon had won a clear mandate for a referendum in last year’s Holyrood election and in a Scottish parliament vote in March. Support for independence still sits as high as 47% they argue, although other polls suggest it is slipping down to 43%.
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