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Nicola Sturgeon is trying to force the UK government into a court battle over a second independence referendum in order to distract from her party’s failure to secure a majority at Holyrood, Douglas Ross has said.
Speaking to the media on Sunday afternoon, the Scottish Conservative leader was in jubilant mood as he proclaimed he had stopped a SNP majority and “stopped indyref2”.
He said that “within hours of the polls closing [Nicola Sturgeon] had resorted to her usual message of division”.
As Michael Gove did earlier this morning, Ross dodged the question of whether the UK government would take the Scottish government to court if it progressed legislation for a second referendum – as Sturgeon has said she will, after the immediate Covid crisis has passed.
He said that it was more important to focus on the competency of the Holyrood parliament, implying that the matter was unlikely to get to a court battle.
Let’s just look at what the Scottish parliament has the powers to do right now. I do think Nicola Sturgeon is focusing her argument on a hypothetical court battle about getting something through the Scottish parliament that currently it doesn’t have any competency over, to distract attention from the fact that she has on two occasions failed to secure a majority government.
She is framing this as a battle she believes she can force the UK government into taking the Scottish government to court … Nicola Sturgeon is many steps ahead to distract from the issues within her own party and the disappointment for many members of the SNP that she has failed to gain a majority.
He pointed out that both the lord advocate and the presiding officer had a role in deciding what legislation is…
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