PM says ‘now is not the time’ for a fresh independence vote but Scottish leader says May’s decision could ‘seal the fate of the union’

Theresa May has rejected Nicola Sturgeon’s demands for a new Scottish independence referendum before Brexit, saying “now is not the time” for a vote on the UK’s constitutional future.

The prime minister said a referendum was not appropriate when the UK was wrestling with leaving the EU and voters would not be able to see the precise terms of the UK’s new trading and immigration deal with the EU.

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In a move that suggested the vote could be pushed back until as late as 2021, the Tories said no discussion on staging it could be held until after Brexit was signed at some point in 2019.

“To look at the issue at this time would be unfair, because people wouldn’t have the necessary information to make such a crucial decision,” May said.

May’s rejection of Sturgeon’s proposal sets up a battle of wills between the two leaders, but there were signs Sturgeon was preparing to soften her demands for the vote to be held between autumn 2018 and spring 2019.

Backed by SNP MPs, Sturgeon denounced May’s decision as a “democratic outrage”, saying: “You know history may look back on today and see it as the day the fate of the union was sealed.”

The Tories and the UK government had no mandate from the Scottish electorate to dictate to the Scottish parliament when and how a referendum could be held, she said.

The first minister told the BBC: “It is an argument for independence really in a nutshell, that Westminster thinks it has got the right to block the democratically elected mandate of the Scottish government and the majority in the Scottish parliament.”

But speaking after May’s statement, Sturgeon’s chief spokesman suggested the Scottish government could agree to postpone it until May 2021, when the next Holyrood elections are held.

He insisted Sturgeon would continue to fight for the vote to be held by spring 2019, but added that her mandate for a referendum, on the grounds that Scotland was being taken out of the EU against its will, lasted until those elections.

“The first minister has made clear her preferred timescale and that is the timescale we’re working to,” he said. But asked if that meant a referendum could be held by 2021, he said “yes” and added: “The mandate is clear: the mandate is for the parliamentary term.”

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, and David Mundell, the Scottish secretary in the UK government, said they would not countenance any referendum until after Brexit had been completed and been allowed time to prove it had been successful.

They said Sturgeon did not have the mandate she claimed. Unlike in 2012, when all Scotland’s parties backed the 2014 referendum proposal, the Scottish parliament was now split on the issue. The SNP was in a minority government at Holyrood but had a substantial majority in 2012.

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The opinion polls showed there was no majority for independence, and the polls also showed a large majority of voters opposed a new vote before Brexit. And staging a referendum before Brexit breached a clear principle established for the last independence referendum that the vote needed to be fair: it would be unfair to ask voters to choose before Brexit when they did not exactly know what the choice was between.

Davidson’s spokesman admitted the Tories could reverse their position on this if there was a substantial and sustained surge in support for independence and in demands for a referendum in the next two years.

But Davidson and Mundell said at this stage there was no prospect of any discussion about authorising that vote. “We reject conclusively the timetable for a referendum set out by the Scottish government,” Davidson said.

“For a key reason – because it is unfair to Scottish voters. We have just come through a referendum campaign when a key complaint among many people was that they did not have the necessary information to help them make an informed decision.

“If we were to keep to the first minister’s timetable, this is exactly what would happen in Scotland, too. On the most important political decision a country can make, we would be voting blind.”

It would take up to a year for both governments and both parliaments to agree and authorise a legally-constituted referendum. The Electoral Commission would need up to six months to decide on a question, with another six months needed for the referendum campaign.

The timing of May’s challenge to Sturgeon will be seen as provocative by the Scottish National party, as it was brought forward to coincide with the start of the SNP’s spring conference in Aberdeen on Friday.

It was expected that Sturgeon and the SNP deputy leader, Angus Robertson, would announce the start of a fresh yes campaign, to build up mass support for independence and for a vote before Brexit takes place.

UK government sources had indicated on Wednesday that May would not formally respond to Sturgeon’s timetable before the first minister had officially requested legal authority to stage the vote after next week’s Holyrood vote on the proposal.

Davidson and Mundell denied this was true. Mundell said it would be discourteous to Holyrood if the UK government failed to make clear before next week’s vote that it had already decided to reject outright Sturgeon’s timetable.

Alex Neil, a former Scottish government health secretary and the SNP’s most prominent Eurosceptic, said it was constitutional nonsense for the Tories to claim that a government needed political unanimity for a referendum or to push through major constitutional changes. May had no majority for Brexit at Westminster.

“There is a fundamental point of principle that the Scottish parliament should have the power to decide on its own when and if it wants a referendum,” Neil said. “It has never been the case that you need every party to sign up to major constitutional change. That is absurd.”