UNITED KINGDOM — (CNN) The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, said she would lay the groundwork for a split from the UK as the British government prepared to press ahead with the formal process of leaving the European Union.
Sturgeon said it was clear that the UK was heading for a “bad deal” on Brexit, and planned to seek the legal authority next week to hold a new independence referendum before Britain leaves the EU.
Her decision to call for a new vote came as Theresa May, the British Prime Minister, was getting ready to invoke Article 50, which would set the UK on the road to splitting from the EU after two years of divorce talks.
May could begin the process as early as Tuesday if legislation passes its final hurdles in the UK parliament later Monday. But Sturgeon’s announcement on Monday and the looming Dutch elections on Wednesday could push the timetable back.
Scotland to split?
Speaking in Edinburgh, Sturgeon said she would ask the Scottish parliament next week to grant her the power to call a new independence referendum.
Sturgeon said May had failed to engage with her call for Scotland to remain in the European single market after Brexit, and that Scotland risked being taken out of the EU against its will.
In the Brexit referendum, Scotland bucked the UK trend and voted 62% to 38% to remain in the EU. Sturgeon said it was for Scots to decide whether they followed the rest of the UK or forged their own path.
“I am ensuring that Scotland’s future … will be decided by the people of Scotland,” she told reporters at Bute House, the official residence of the Scottish first minister. “It will be Scotland’s choice and I trust the people of Scotland to make that choice.”
Sturgeon said she wanted the referendum to take place between late 2018 and early 2019, before Brexit negotiations are completed. That would enable her to argue that Scotland should stay in the EU as the rest of the UK left.
The UK government must agree to a new Scottish vote. Downing Street on Monday said Sturgeon’s announcement was “divisive” and that May would seek a Brexit deal in the interests of the whole UK.
But the statement stopped short of saying the UK would block a new independence referendum. In the last one, in 2014, Scotland voted 55% to 45% to remain in the UK. Downing Street said there was no appetite in Scotland for a re-run.
It would be politically difficult for the UK government to deny Scotland permission for another referendum. But it may seek to argue about the timing, to avoid fighting a battle over independence in Scotland at the same time as negotiating an exit from the EU.
John Curtice, Professor of Politics at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, opinion polling on Scottish independence is close. “Nobody can be sure who would win,” he told CNN.
He said the “No” camp has generally held a slight lead over the past year and currently leads 52-48 if undecided voters are excluded, according to opinion polls tracked by the think tank ScotCen.
But polls suggest there are more than enough undecided voters to swing the results either way.
Brexit bill
Sturgeon’s announcement casts a shadow over the UK government’s plan to begin the formal process of leaving the EU, which was thought likely to go ahead this week.
Later on Monday, both houses of the UK parliament vote on the EU Withdrawal Bill which, gives May permission to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which governs the relationships between EU member states.
That would give the UK a two-year window in which to hammer out a divorce deal with the other 27 EU governments. The negotiations are expected to be tough, and there is no guarantee that a deal could be reached in the time available.
Government ministers have urged the House of Lords not to stand in the way of the bill if, as expected, MPs vote to remove amendments on Monday afternoon.
Any delay in the parliamentary process could mean the process would be pushed later in the month, as the UK government wants to avoid a clash with the Dutch elections, which are held on Wednesday.
Ministers may also want the dust to settle on Sturgeon’s referendum call.
Pressure on May
May has come under increasing pressure from Parliament in recent weeks as the start of negotiations move closer.
On Sunday, lawmakers published a report which warned that the government’s failure to prepare for a scenario in which no deal is reached with the European Union over Brexit would be a “serious dereliction of duty.”
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said that the UK should be prepared for the “real prospect” that the two-year negotiation cycle may end in deadlock.
“The possibility of ‘no deal’ is real enough to require the government to plan how to deal with it,” head of the committee Crispin Blunt said in the report.
“But there is no evidence to indicate that this is receiving the consideration it deserves or that serious contingency planning is under way. The government has repeatedly said that it will walk away from a ‘bad’ final deal.
That makes preparing for ‘no deal’ all the more essential,” he added.
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