Scottish nationalists ready to hold a unilateral independence referendum

The Principal Minister of Escoica, Nicola Sturgeon, last Tuesday in the Autonomous Parliament DPA via Europa Press / Europa Press

The Scottish National Party (SNP) held its National Assembly this weekend, a programmatic conference whose generic title was

.

Preparations for the regional elections in May are accelerating, and all the polls indicate a comfortable victory for the formation.

If they obtain a parliamentary majority, their objective will be to prepare for the holding of a new independence referendum.

In 2014, they were defeated, by a difference of 10 percentage points, by supporters of staying in the UK.

Since then it has rained a lot.

Brexit arrived, rejected by a majority of Scots.

Boris Johnson arrived, whose popularity is negligible in this territory.

And a pandemic arrived that convinced many Scots that they were in better hands with the Government of Edinburgh than with that of London.

• Towards an independent Scotland

“I want to hold a legal referendum.

To that end, I am going to ask the Scottish people to grant me authority in May ”, explained this Sunday on the BBC the Chief Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon.

“This is democracy.

Not what I want or what Boris Johnson wants ”.

As it has faced the British Prime Minister's refusal to hold a new consultation in recent months, the Scottish Government has gradually raised its stakes.

Only recently has Sturgeon begun to admit that his party was exploring other, presumably legal, avenues to circumvent Westminster's refusal.

The main one, already revealed, would be that it was the Scottish Parliament itself that approved a law for the holding of the referendum, even without the consent of Westminster, with which the 2014 one was held. And fight in the courts any attempt by London to stop it.

The SNP has presented this Sunday an eleven-point document in which the entire legal itinerary is described, with supposed alternatives to the refusal of the central government, to allow the vote (already baptized in the media as Indyref2) could be held.

It would be, they admit, a consultative referendum, but which would inevitably end up leading, if the result is what all recent polls predict, in a political earthquake.

The only condition for this mechanism to be put in place, Sturgeon pointed out, is that the pandemic begins to subside.

“Polls now show that a majority of Scots want independence.

If the SNP wins the regional elections in a few months, when its main proposal is precisely to give citizens the opportunity to speak, what democrat could stand in the middle of that path? ”, Said the chief minister.

newspaper

published a poll this Sunday, the result of which leads the publication to predict a looming constitutional crisis in the United Kingdom.

49% of Scots and 42% of Northern Irish want to separate from the country.

But, much more relevant, 51% Northern Irish and 50% Scots want a consultation to take place in their respective territories in the next five years.

And the general feeling conveyed by the survey is that the majority of the inhabitants of the four corners of the country (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) are convinced that the break will be a reality in the next decade.

Brexit has brought Northern Ireland closer to the EU than to the UK, and many analysts suspect that it will be a matter of time before this territory begins to perceive that Dublin is better defending its interests in Brussels than London.

The 2014 independence referendum was an ordeal by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, who only managed to win after a final effort in which Queen Elizabeth II became involved.

Among other arguments, the Scots were convinced that a split would place them outside the EU.

Just what happened years later, and that left many of them with a treacherous aftertaste.

Although Johnson insists that the 2014 consultation should last for an entire generation, it set a clear legal precedent that leads many politicians - in Edinburgh, but also in London - to conclude that it is legally highly questionable to prevent the Scots from returning. to pronounce.

This, despite the fact that the official position of the Scottish Labor and Conservatives remains one of absolute rejection of a new consultation.