The UK government’s difficulties over negotiating a good Brexit mount with a threat by Nicola Sturgeon, head of the Scotland devolved government, to hold a second referendum in autumn 2018 on her country leaving the UK.
She said that would be a “common sense” time for a second independence referendum on leaving the UK. She lost the first referendum in 2014.
Her timing co-cincided with a poll of polls (Feb 2017) showing just a one per cent lead of British leavers over remainers, well within a statistical margin of error. Her call comes at the same time as UK Prime Minister May’s start of the official Article 50 talks about Brexit with Brussels in March 2017.
This means that Sturgeon’s ‘common sense’ amounts to a second front against the London UK government. She is saying that every Brexit move by May re-opens the Scottish independence debate.
Politics is the practice of hard choices. Does Theresa May win a Brexit from Brussels to lose a United Kingdom north of the border with Scotland?
Historical background: England and Scotland united into one kingdom in 1603.
