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Party leader says if Scotland voted remain it should not be forced to leave with rest of UK

Nicola Sturgeon has cleared the way for Scottish National party MPs to back a second EU referendum in a Commons vote, regardless of whether her party’s demands for special conditions such as a guarantee of a new Scottish independence vote are met.

Speaking on the first day of her party’s autumn conference in Glasgow, the SNP leader and first minister also indicated her party would seek a guarantee that if Scotland voted again to remain in the EU while the rest of the UK voted to leave, it would not be forced to accept the result for a second time.

She suggested a “double lock”, which would require the support of all four UK nations before Britain could leave the EU. The SNP’s Westminster leader, Ian Blackford, had said on Saturday that his party could support a second referendum on Brexit if there were a guarantee that Scotland could also hold another vote on independence. A YouGov poll of SNP members for the People’s Vote campaign found 79% would back a new referendum on Brexit.

Sturgeon also said she could not envisage SNP MPs voting for any Brexit deal brokered by Theresa May that did not include membership of the single market and customs union.

As the third-largest party at Westminster, the SNP’s 35 MPs could play a key role in any knife-edge vote on the Brexit deal or a second referendum.

Sturgeon told BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show: “We would not stand in the way of a second referendum, a so-called ‘people’s vote’. SNP MPs would undoubtedly vote for that proposition.

“We would of course want to talk to people about how we ensure that Scotland does not end up in the same position all over again, where we voted to remain in the EU but find ourselves facing exit completely against our will.”

Sturgeon’s aides say she remains deeply sceptical that a “people’s vote” will take place when both May and the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, oppose it, but they implied her undertaking that the SNP would not stand in the way of one was a pledge to support it even if her demands were not met.

Pressed on whether any such guarantee was likely, Sturgeon said: “Before the 2016 referendum, I put forward the proposal for the double lock where the UK could only leave the EU if all four of the countries of the UK voted for that. The more these compromise options that are put forward by the SNP or the Scottish government are rejected, the more people in Scotland will conclude that the only option here is to take our future into our own hands and become independent.”

Other parties are unlikely to back the idea of giving Scotland in effect a veto over a second EU referendum result.

SNP sources said that if the Commons voted for a second Brexit referendum, Sturgeon would still support it even if the SNP’s demands for special conditions were rejected. SNP MPs would table amendments to the referendum legislation but would not withdraw support for the bill if they lost, they said. One source also indicated that SNP MPs would not allow second referendum legislation to fail by abstaining in a Commons vote.

Sturgeon faces continuing demands from hardline independence activists and some MPs and MSPs to launch a second independence campaign before the Brexit deadline of next March.

Tens of thousands of Scottish independence supporters congregated in Edinburgh on Saturday, marking the culmination of a summer of marches across the country organised by the non-aligned grassroots group All Under One Banner. The march organisers have called for a second vote to be held before 2021, which marks the end of the Brexit transition period and the next Holyrood elections.

Discussions of both Brexit and independence are conspicuously absent from the SNP’s main conference programme but the topics are expected to dominate the fringe.

As the SNP, now the second-largest party in the UK in terms of membership, began the conference on Sunday morning, a Panelbase survey for the Sunday Times put backing for independence at 48% in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

An SNP-commissioned snapshot of voting intention also found that 50% of respondents would support independence if another referendum took place after the UK had left the EU.

Blackford told a fringe meeting at the conference on Sunday that the party’s 35 MPs would use “every means at our disposal” in the Commons to block a hard Brexit, and urged MPs from other parties to do the same.



He said he believed there was a cross-party majority in the Commons in favour of staying inside the single market and customs union, which also backed a second Brexit referendum, if that became the best option to block Brexit.

Sturgeon was asked by Marr to clarify when she planned to update her party on her plans for a potential second independence referendum. She responded: “When Theresa May comes back with a deal.”

“I will set out what I think the next steps are when we are at the end of this phase of negotiations,” she told Marr. “The future EU-UK relationship is the context in which Scotland would decide that question of independence, so it will shape some of the answers to questions people have.

“So it’s great for me to be sitting here on the first day of my party conference with a number of polls showing support for independence rising. The quite extraordinary demonstration of support on the streets of Edinburgh yesterday: that’s a happy position for an independence-supporting SNP leader to be in.

“But it’s important to get the timing right, not just for self-interested reasons. We want to have that decision when we’ve got the best chance of winning, but out of respect for the decision.”