NICOLA Sturgeon has said a poor result for the SNP in Scotland takes independence “off the immediate agenda”.
Speaking after an exit poll projected just 10 seats for her party, the former first minister said that it had been a mistake not to have independence at the heart of the SNP General Election campaign.
However, she said it would be “foolish” to think support for independence had gone away simply because people opted to back Labour in order to remove the Conservative government.
Speaking on ITV, the former first minister said: “A lot of the people – if not the majority of people – who in this election have shifted from the SNP to Labour, they still believe in independence, they haven’t shifted their opinion on independence.
“So it might take the issue off of the immediate agenda for Keir Starmer, but it would be – I think – foolish to suggest that the independence question has gone away.”
Sturgeon further said: “I think one of the questions out of the SNP result tonight is whether they’ve left themselves between two stools on the independence question because I think – in my view – it wasn’t really put front and centre.”
She suggested independence “was never followed through on a day-to-day basis in the campaign – we didn’t hear day after day after day SNP spokespeople make the case for why independence was an answer to the big issues at the heart of the election campaign”.
Sturgeon added: “I might have put it at the heart of the campaign in a more meaningful sense, and I might have failed as well. We will never know that, you know, because we can never put that to the test.
“But I think if you're going to put it at the heart of the campaign, you really then have to do that in substance not just in rhetoric.”
Also appearing on ITV, former Tory chancellor George Osborne said David Cameron had been right to hold an independence referendum in 2014 as it had led to Scottish independence now being further away than ever.
Osborne further claimed that no Westminster government would ever grant another referendum, unless there was a Labour minority leaning on SNP votes.
Osborne also described the exit poll prediction of the Tories’ worst performance on record as the party’s “Waterloo”.
He said: “As for the Conservatives you know, it’s going to sound odd, there’ll be a bit of a sigh of relief, even though it’s the worst results since 1832 when the Duke of Wellington was running the Tory party, so this one feels more like the Tory party’s Waterloo, frankly.
“We’re going to see a load of people lose their seats, household names for those who follow politics, household names.
“And it’d be a huge mistake to take a lot of comfort from this, but there were people thinking, and the polls were suggesting, it could be an extinction night for the Tory party, an extinction level event, and the Tory party would never come back.”
