Nicola sturgeon

Well, golly, Nicola Sturgeon, leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland, says this general election has nothing to do with the arguments for or against Scottish independence.  In one sense, this is correct in as much as independence is not the question on the ballot. But in another, deeper, more genuine sense, everyone knows Sturgeon is pulling your leg here. The election is a proxy referendum on the question of whether there should, at some point in the next couple of years, be another independence referendum. Everyone in Scotland, including SNP supporters, knows this. Even so, as the Tories have noted, this is a familiar SNP argument.

Since I suggested last July that Theresa May, newly anointed as leader of the Conservative and Unionist party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, should call an election to both establish her own legitimacy and allow the country an argument over the kind of Brexit it preferred, it would be unseemly to now deplore her belated decision to go to the country.  Happily, there remain many other things that may be deplored. Far from the least of these is the manner in which the Prime Minister has made her case for an election. It’s not her fault, you see, that she has (correctly, in my view) gone back on her word. She remains a pretty straight kinda gal, you know.

Nicola Sturgeon says that Theresa May has called an early general election in order to 'force through a hard Brexit'. The Scottish First Minister also accused the Prime Minister of attempting to 'to move the UK to the right'. Here's Sturgeon's full statement on a snap election: This announcement is one of the most extraordinary U-turns in recent political history, and it shows that Theresa May is once again putting the interests of her party ahead of those of the country She is clearly betting that the Tories can win a bigger majority in England given the utter disarray in the Labour Party.

Most people are glad to see the end of a referendum campaign, but the losing side always wants to keep going. Nicola Sturgeon has this week demanded a second vote on independence, in defiance of public opinion. And as Brexit talks begin, the country is still divided, with many people wishing to see the negotiations break down and the referendum result be overturned. The Prime Minister will need to fight these two battles in different ways. In Scotland, she must take care not to fall into the nationalists’ traps. Ms Sturgeon ran for office promising not to call a second referendum unless it was ‘clear’ that a ‘majority of people wanted a referendum’. At the time, the SNP expected support for independence to rise.

It is very good to be with you here with you today, and particularly to be able to thank you all for the work you do on behalf of the Government and on behalf of the British people. Vital work that helps millions around the world and speaks strongly to the values that we share as a country. And it is vital work. Not just because the things you do here have a material impact on the lives of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people around the world. But also because the work you do here – in conjunction with your colleagues at the Department for International Development in London – says something important about Britain. It says that we are a kind and generous country.

It's important to keep an ear out for the rhetoric of Britain’s remaining Remain parties, because they are changing, too. Having announced plans for a second Scottish referendum entirely because of Brexit, Nicola Sturgeon is now incredibly cagey about whether her independent nation would even be part of the EU, or perhaps more like Norway. The same is true of the Lib Dems. Last weekend, Tim Farron managed to give a whole speech to his party’s spring conference railing against only a ‘hard Brexit’ and thus never quite saying whether a Lib Dem government (humour me) would leave the EU or not. These people need to get off the fence. Mind you, so do I.

Tim Farron's fearsome foursome: May, Le Pen, Trump, Putin What can Tim Farron, leader of the Liberal Democrats, do to get attention? He had an idea  for the party's conference in York today: suggest that the world is in the grip of a fearsome foursome: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Marine Le Pen... and Theresa May. He claimed that have the same traits in common: being "aggressive, nationalistic, anti-Nato, anti-EU. It is the post-war internationalist consensus unravelling in real time. Winston Churchill's vision for a world that achieves peace through trade, common values and shared endeavour evaporating before our eyes." Clegg: Bring on the election.

The great achievement of the Scottish Nationalists is to persuade people outside the borders of their own nation — including the London-based media — to equate them with the Scottish people. Obviously, they are their chief elected representatives just now, but the result of the referendum on Scottish independence quite clearly showed that the equation is false. So when Nicola Sturgeon says there has to be another referendum because of Brexit, the equation should be much more firmly challenged. There is no moral reason why the result of a declaredly UK-wide referendum should require another vote in part of the kingdom (next, UDI for London?). Nor is there a constitutional right.