THE SNP’S deputy leader has ruled out dissolving Holyrood and using a Scottish Parliament election as a de facto independence referendum.
Keith Brown argued that the requirements of calling a fresh election meant “we couldn’t” use a Holyrood ballot instead of a UK-wide General Election, and suggested the cost-of-living crisis would make holding a new vote inappropriate.
Brown was speaking to BBC Scotland’s Sunday Show after the Supreme Court declared that the Scottish Government needs consent from Westminster to hold a new referendum on independence.
The UK Government has repeatedly refused to grant the required Section 30 order for the necessary transfer of powers.
The SNP plan now is to use the next election as a de facto vote on leaving the Union. The party is organising a special conference on how that would work, to be held in the new year.
But SNP MP Angus MacNeil has been among the pro-independence politicians urging the Scottish Government to dissolve Holyrood and hold a fresh election, instead of waiting until the next UK vote which could take another two years to come around.
Asked on the Sunday Show why the SNP aren’t taking that approach to prevent years of more constitutional arguments, Brown said it wasn’t the right way to do it.
“No we couldn’t,” he told the journalist, who suggested Holyrood could be dissolved as soon as tomorrow.
“You have to have a two-thirds majority in the Scottish Parliament to have a fresh election.”
The journalist suggested that the First Minister could resign to trigger a vote.
Brown replied: “Then you’d go through all sorts of other processes, by electing another First Minister. We’re in the middle of the cost-of-living crisis.”
He went on: “We do want to have a referendum this year – we could do that still, if the UK Government just agreed to the proper route they’ve agreed in the past.
“That is the quick way to do it, that is the reasonable way to do it, that is the democratic way to do it.”
Brown was also challenged on why it will take several months for the party’s conference on a de facto referendum to be held.
“We’ve already said the principles which will apply, but there are more details to be worked out,” he told the BBC.
“We’re having to do this now because it’s been denied at every other route. I’m not sure why the conversation’s much more about this, it should be about the absurd denial of democracy by the UK Government. People should be challenging that.”
