First minister challenges Scotland voters over letting Westminster dictate future, but most Northern Irish MPs likely to back article 50

Nicola Sturgeon has challenged voters in Scotland to decide whether they are content to have the country’s fate decided by rightwing Tories in London or vote for independence.

The first minister again raised the prospect of a snap referendum on independence after the UK supreme court unanimously rejected her argument that Holyrood had to be consulted about triggering article 50.

In an angry attack on the UK government’s approach to Scotland’s pro-EU stance, Sturgeon said the ruling meant all Westminster assurances that Scotland was an equal partner in the union were worthless.

“This raises fundamental issues above and beyond that of EU membership. Is Scotland content for our future to be dictated by an increasingly rightwing Westminster government with just one MP here, or is it better that we take our future into our own hands?” she said.

“It is becoming ever clearer that this is a choice that Scotland must make.”

Sturgeon added that her government would table its own legislative consent motion in Holyrood, regardless of the ruling.

Brexit: government will introduce article 50 bill 'within days' following supreme court ruling – live Read more

The supreme court’s 11 justices, including two Scottish judges, said the longstanding convention that the UK’s three devolved parliaments had a right to vote on any Westminster legislation that affected their powers did not apply to EU membership.

The Welsh and Northern Irish governments had also called for their assemblies to be formally asked to approve triggering article 50. But the court ruled that the Sewel convention, named after the Labour peer who drafted that clause, applied to domestic not international affairs.

Sturgeon had expected that decision and had already admitted that even if the Sewel convention had applied, it did not amount to a veto for Holyrood over Westminster’s constitutional right to press on with triggering article 50.

The first minister said the supreme court ruling exposed how weak the convention was. Sturgeon said she would press the case for a compromise deal on Scottish access to the EU when she meets Theresa May for talks on Brexit at the joint ministerial committee for devolved and UK governments on Monday.

“It is now crystal clear that the promises made to Scotland by the UK government about the Sewel convention, and the importance of embedding it in statute, were not worth the paper they were written on,” she said.

“Although the court has concluded that the UK government is not legally obliged to consult the devolved administrations, there remains a clear political obligation to do so. Indeed, the court itself notes the importance of Sewel as a political convention.”

The Holyrood vote will have no legal standing but politically is likely to expose growing divisions among MSPs over Scotland’s stance on the EU, with the Scottish Tories now insisting that the Scottish parliament embrace the opportunities presented to it by Brexit.

There was initially cross-party consensus that Scotland should be allowed special access to the single market because its voters rejected leaving the EU 62% to 38%. Scottish Labour is also under pressure: it backed giving Scotland special status but that stance has been rejected by Jeremy Corbyn, the party’s UK leader.

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, said her party would “have no truck with yet more SNP stunts on Brexit”, and would oppose Sturgeon’s new article 50 motion. “The SNP tried to use this hearing to hold the rest of the UK to ransom. It has comprehensively failed to do so,” Davidson said. “All parties should now respect the ruling that the court has given.”

Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, said her party would continue to back Sturgeon’s case for a special Scottish deal, but implied that Labour would withdraw support for future constitutional battles.

Dugdale did not comment on Sturgeon’s plan for a Holyrood vote on article 50, but said: “Unity cannot be achieved by a politics that sees one half of the country constantly facing off against the other. We are divided enough already.”

Labour officials said Dugdale would not comment on the article 50 vote until they had seen the motion’s wording.



Sturgeon hopes the clash will increase lukewarm popular support for a snap independence referendum. Recent opinion polls by YouGov and BMG show only 38% Scottish voters want a vote this year, excluding don’t knows, with only 45% backing independence. Including don’t knows, support for independence falls to 38%.

That has forced Sturgeon to rule out a referendum during 2017, but there is growing speculation she may call one for 2018. She is under heavy pressure within the SNP, chiefly from her predecessor, Alex Salmond, to hold a vote soon to ensure Scotland’s EU membership can be transferred smoothly before the UK leaves the EU.

Salmond, now the SNP’s foreign affairs spokesman in the Commons, greeted the supreme court’s decision by announcing the SNP would table 50 “serious and substantive” amendments to the article 50 bill.

That would include a demand that May gets agreement from all three devolved governments before she triggers article 50. Salmond said she should also publish a full white paper on Brexit alongside the article 50 bill as demanded by the cross-party Commons select committee on exiting the EU.

Yet in his statement, Salmond ignored the supreme court’s unanimous rejection of the Scottish government’s claim it had a constitutional right to be formally consulted.

He said: “If Theresa May is intent on being true to her word that Scotland and the other devolved administrations are equal partners in this process, then now is the time to show it. Now is the time to sit with the joint ministerial committee and not just casually acknowledge, but constructively engage. Consultation must mean consultation.”

At least 10 out of the 14 MPs from Northern Ireland who take their seats in the House of Commons are likely to support the triggering of article 50.

The Ulster Unionist party confirmed on Tuesday that despite calling for a vote to remain in last June’s referendum its two MPs – Tom Elliott representing Fermanagh/South Tyrone and Danny Kinahan who holds the South Antrim seat – will both be voting for the UK to leave the EU when the vote is put to parliament.

All of the Democratic Unionists’ eight MPs are guaranteed to vote to back article 50, given that the party supports Brexit.



In a joint statement reacting to the supreme court ruling on Tuesday, the two Ulster Unionist MPs said: “On the 23rd of June the people of the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union and on that basis, our MPs will be voting to trigger article 50 when the vote comes to parliament.

“We welcome that the supreme court has noted that the devolved administrations will not have a veto on the UK’s decision to withdraw from the EU.”

Overall the majority of Northern Irish MPs will back article 50 despite the fact that 56% of the electorate in the region voted to remain.

Sinn Féin has four Westminster seats but is wedded to the traditional republican policy of boycotting the House of Commons.

The Social Democratic and Labour party has three seats and, given its strongly pro-EU stance, will vote against article 50.

The SDLP leader, Colum Eastwood, highlighted the Sinn Féin boycott of Westminster while condemning the decision not to give the devolved assemblies a say in article 50.

Eastwood said: “Everyone on this island has a responsibility to ensure that this does not happen. It would prove devastating both politically and economically. That includes the Sinn Féin MPs who do not take their seats at Westminster. If Sinn Féin are serious about new leadership they cannot shirk their responsibility to the people of Ireland and should therefore take their seats to vote against article 50.”

