The Scottish Greens have backed calls for another independence referendum next year - before Scotland is taken out of the EU .
Party leader Patrick Harvie said it would be a “mistake” to wait until Boris Johnson’s proposed one-year transition period runs out after formally leaving on January 31.
The position, announced in the Greens ’ manifesto on Monday, puts the party in line with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon.
Harvie said: “Scotland didn't vote for Brexit, Scotland certainly didn't vote - I actually think almost nobody in the UK voted - for the hard Brexit cliff-edge that's being promised by Boris Johnson outside of the single market and outside the customs union, the abolition of a great many of our rights and protections and a deregulation agenda.”
He said the position was not agreed with the SNP before being written into their manifesto.
Greens are only standing in 20 constituencies in Scotland and the first-past-the-post system stacks the odds heavily against party candidates.
But their manifesto promises to demand “climate action” from government. Harvie said voters who can’t back Greens should insist other parties go further on the environment.
Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard meanwhile insisted the current SNP-Green majority for independence at Holyrood is “no mandate” for a second vote.
But he suggested the SNP could still get one with support from the Greens after 2021.
"If the SNP or other parties put in their manifesto that they wanted to hold a second independence referendum and they got a mandate for that, either 2021, 2026 or at some future point, then of course what we're saying is that that would not be blocked by a UK Labour Westminster government,” he said.
Scots Tory interim leader Jackson Carlaw said: “This confirms Richard Leonard has fallen into line with Jeremy Corbyn in opening the door for a second independence referendum."
