Sturgeon Vows Legal Independence Referendum as Scotland Agitates

(Bloomberg) — Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon vowed to hold a legal and internationally recognized referendum on independence as she stepped up calls on the British government to allow her to do so in the wake of Brexit.

After her Scottish National Party won 48 of Scotland’s 59 districts in the U.K. election last week, Sturgeon said Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s position of denying another vote on full autonomy is now untenable. Like his predecessor, Johnson is balking at transferring the power to hold the vote, saying that Scotland already chose to remain in the U.K. in 2014.

“The demand for this country to have the right to determine its own path comes not just from me as first minister — it flows from the people of Scotland and the verdict they delivered last week,” Sturgeon said in a statement as she published her detailed “Scotland’s Right to Choose” paper. “The Scottish Government believes that right should be exercised free from the threat of legal challenge.”

The U.K.’s decision to leave the European Union has upended the country’s politics. The election saw England renew its commitment to Brexit by giving Johnson a large majority while Scotland, which voted to remain in the EU, got behind the SNP. What’s left is another standoff over the future of the three-centuries-old union.

Sturgeon finds herself with a party gunning for another vote and an intransigent British government, a situation now more comparable with Spain’s separatist region of Catalonia.

In 2014, Scots voted 55% to 45% to remain in the U.K., in part because the country was an EU member. The legal vote after a transfer of power from London was lauded by Catalans demanding Madrid do the same. Since then, Catalonia held an illegal vote, leading to a crackdown by Spanish authorities and the jailing of some of its leaders.

Sturgeon is determined not to go down that route, with her government sticking to the line that 2014 set the legal precedent that must be followed. In the meantime, she says she will build the argument for independence, yet she also may need to calm some of her most ardent supporters.

“I urge people in Scotland to rally round the case for Scotland’s right to choose — our right to self-determination,” she said. “It is not the time for Scotland to give up on reasoned and democratic argument, but to pursue it ever more confidently.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Rodney Jefferson in Edinburgh at [email protected]

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at [email protected], Stuart Biggs

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