A Scottish National party MP has said comments by the former prime minister John Major, who said Scots should be allowed another vote on independence provided it is followed by a confirmatory ballot, should act as a “wake-up call” for Boris Johnson. Giving a blistering summation of the “unforgivable” consequences of the Brexit vote at a Middle Temple lecture on Monday, Major warned the UK government that refusing a referendum – with polls showing a consistent majority in favour of independence for the first time – could boost the nationalist cause. The former Conservative leader suggested that Westminster could agree on the basis of two linked votes, the first to vote on the principle of negotiations, and the second on the outcome of them, adding that such a system might have delivered a different result on Brexit.
“The purpose of the second referendum would be that Scottish electors would know what they were voting for, and be able to compare it to what they now have. This did not happen with Brexit; had it done so, there may have been no Brexit,” he said. Responding to Major’s proposals, the SNP’s deputy Westminster leader, Kirsten Oswald, said: “The remarks from the former Tory prime minister must serve as a wake-up call for the current prime minister over his undemocratic stance – straight out of the Trump playbook – to attempt to deny the results of a democratic election by trying to block the people of Scotland from having the right to choose their own future in a referendum”. Last week Johnson’s Scottish secretary, Alister Jack, made clear the UK government would refuse any request for a section 30 order, which would devolve under the Scotland Act 1998 the power to hold a referendum, “for a generation”, even if a pro-independence majority was returned at next spring’s Scottish parliament elections. Asked to define a generation, Jack replied: “Is it 25 years or is it 40 years? You tell me. But it’s certainly not six years, nor 10.” SNP activists will bring an amendment to their party conference at the end of November intended to debate in public the action the party could take if a new section 30 order request is denied. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister and SNP leader, has always insisted that any future referendum must be “legal and legitimate”. The SNP MP Joanna Cherry, who brought last year’s prorogation action against the UK government, argued that it was still not clear in law whether Holyrood required the approval of Westminster before a new independence referendum could be legally held, and warned: “Scotland had her fill of Westminster gerrymandering in the 1979 devolution referendum and we are way beyond being fooled again.”