In one of his first overt broadsides against Nicola Sturgeon, Alex Salmond said that the SNP was showing a “lack of urgency” over Scottish independence.
The leader of the Alba Party said that it was going to tackle the “constitutional debate” after the suspension of the election campaign after the death of the Duke of Edinburgh.
Sturgeon has previously said that she hoped another referendum on independence would take place in the first half of the parliamentary term, which would be by the end of November 2023. Last week, however, she told journalists that that would not be the case if the country was still in the grip of a pandemic.
In a statement released yesterday, Salmond, the former first minister and SNP leader, said: “Nicola Sturgeon’s comments last week about an independence referendum in 2023 or later have caused total consternation in the national movement.
“It seems to be that Scotland will not be free until after 2023, more seriously it seems to indicate a lack of urgency on bringing the independence question to a decision.”
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The Alba Party, as with the SNP, considers Scottish independence as something that would aid the country in its recovery from the coronavirus, but Salmond has said that it was a “priority” for his party.
“The reality is that Scottish independence is not an alternative to economic recovery from Covid, it is an essential part of building a new, different and better society,” he said.
“For Alba, independence is the priority, which is why we are putting it front and centre in the election campaign.
“In the power balance that will emerge post election between Scotland and Westminster it is fundamentally true that Boris Johnson will find it substantially more difficult taking on a parliament with an independence supermajority representing a country than he will in framing the debate as party against party, prime minister against first minister.”
Yesterday Sturgeon told The Guardian she believed that Boris Johnson would relent in his opposition to another referendum if the SNP won a majority on May 6.
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She said: “If people in Scotland vote for a party saying, ‘When the time is right, there should be an independence referendum’, you cannot stand in the way of that, and I don’t think that is what will happen.”
Responding to her comments, the prime minister’s spokesman said: “Ministers and officials across . . . all UK government departments are focused on tackling the Covid-19 pandemic.
“That’s what the public wants to see, Scottish people have been clear they want to see the UK government and devolved administrations working together to defeat this pandemic.
“So, calling for a referendum in this way in the middle of the pandemic is not right.”
