The Scottish people should not be blocked from holding a second independence referendum if they decide they want to hold one, Alistair Darling has said.
The former director of the ‘No’ campaign’s Better Together told The Times newspaper that suppressive a vote could cause people to move towards independence.
“My view is if people really, genuinely want to have a vote you are daft to deny it,” he told the newspaper.
“It’s a bit like in Spain: the Spanish government seem determined not to hold a referendum [on Catalan independence] which always seemed to me to be just fanning the flames.
Nicola Sturgeon said the SNP’s manifesto would include a timescale for another vote
“But I don’t think people in Scotland are saying we would love another referendum tomorrow morning. It was an exhausting campaign for everyone I think, so I just don’t see that happening.”
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she would lay out the SNP’s timetable for holding another referendum in the party’s 2016 Holyrood election manifesto.
Stuart Hosie, the party’s deputy leader, said at the weekend that another plebiscite could be held within five years and warned that any prime minister who tried to prevent a vote from taking place would be “very, very foolish”.
A poll released by the STV news channel earlier this month found that Scotland would vote for independence if a second referendum on leaving the UK was held tomorrow
The Ipsos MORI survey found that a would-be ‘Yes’ campaign would have a nine-point lead over the ‘No’ camp.
53 per cent of Scottish voters would vote ‘Yes’ while 44 per cent would vote ‘No’, with three per cent undecided which way they would vote, the survey suggests.
This poll marks the first lead for leading the UK since the last referendum.
Half of those surveyed said they would like to see another referendum in the next five years, while 58 per cent said they would be in favour of another vote being held within ten years.
