09:57

Nicola Sturgeon insisted on the Andrew Marr show that Boris Johnson’s position on continuing to deny the SNP a second independence referendum is wholly undemocratic.

Describing it as a “subversion of democracy” that the Tories were “raging against the reality” of the election result in Scotland, which saw the SNP win 48 out of 59 seats while the Scottish Tories’ MPs were reduced by half, she said:



It really is such a subversion of democracy that we’re sitting here the Sunday after an election and you’re talking to the leader of the party that overwhelmingly won the election and I’m under pressure to say what I’m doing because the mandate that I won is not going to be honoured by the party that got roundly defeated in Scotland. It is just such perversion and subservion of democracy that it will not hold.

Asked what she intended to do if Johnson continued to refuse to granT the s30 order to hold a legal referendum, she repeated her pledge that she would not want to hold an illegal Catalan-style vote, but added:

I said to him on the phone on Friday night, If he thinks saying no is the end of the matter he’s going to find himself completely and utterly wrong You cannot hold Scotland in the union against its will. You cannot just lock us in a cupboard and turn the key and hope everything goes away. If the United Kingdom is to continue then it can only be by consent. If Boris Johnson is confident in the case for the union then he should be confident enough to make that case and allow the people to decide.