Keir Starmer has ruled out backing a second Scottish independence referendum while the country recovers from the covid crisis.
The Labour leader said: "Given the damage and division this would cause, no responsible First Minister should contemplate it and no responsible Prime Minister would grant it."
There are inevitable demands for a re-run vote if the SNP win an independence majority in May's Scottish elections.
But Starmer’s rejection was conditional, saying "there should not be another independence referendum while our economic and health outlook is so precarious nor until there has been a proper assessment of the costs, consequences and uncertainties of separation".
In the previously delayed speech outlining “a positive alternative to the Scottish people” Starmer decried a decade of Tory government failures that have “eroded the fabric of the United Kingdom”.
Significantly, he also stepped up the attack on the SNP's “separatism” as he laid out Labour's stall for the 2021 Scottish elections.
He said: “Ultimately, there’s nothing that separatism can offer to a child living in poverty in Glasgow, just as there’s nothing that nationalism can offer a child living in poverty in Camden.
“And the last thing Scotland needs now is more years of division. So Labour will argue passionately against another independence referendum. We will argue that today, we will argue that tomorrow.”
He added: “It would be entirely the wrong priority to hold another Scottish independence referendum in the teeth of the deepest recession for 300 years.”
Opposition to a second referendum is intended to get Labour through difficult Holyrood elections under the leadership of Richard Leonard after which Starmer hopes to have a devolution plan for the whole UK in place.
Starmer promised a revolution to shift power not just from London to the nations and regions but also out of Holyrood which he said felt as remote as Westminster to many Scots.
He promised the Scottish part of Labour’s constitutional commission, advised by former prime minister Gordon Brown, would deliver a “fresh and tangible offer” to the Scottish people and be completed “as soon as possible”.
Starmer dodged a Daily Record question about the achievements of Scottish Labour’s embattled leader Richard Leonard who has been hit by resignations and infighting for months.
Starmer said: “It is vital that we rebuild trust in Labour and in Scottish Labour in Scotland."
“That’s absolutely what I’m committed to doing every day, every week, every month, into May of next year and then on from there, working with Richard Leonard and Scottish Labour.”
He added that he had a “very strong working relationship” with his Scottish counterpart and added: “We are working together on a campaign plan into May of next year and we’ll be working on that together between now and May.”
