Boris Johnson has urged Scottish nationalists to stop “talking endlessly” about another independence referendum and concentrate instead on recovering from the Covid pandemic. Speaking during a tour of Covid vaccination projects in Scotland, the prime minister said Nicola Sturgeon had promised that the 2014 referendum had been a “once-in-a-generation event” and she should be held to that. He said the first minister’s quest for a second independence referendum after May’s Scottish elections was a “diversionary tactic” to distract attention from the SNP’s poor record on domestic policies. “It is also a fact that the SNP government hasn’t been notably successful on delivering good results on education or tackling drugs,” he said. “I don’t think that the right thing to do is to talk endlessly about another referendum when I think what the people of the country and the people of Scotland want in particular is to fight this pandemic. I don’t see the advantage of getting lost in pointless constitutional wrangling when after all we had a referendum not so very long ago.”
Johnson, facing intense pressure amid growing support for Scottish independence and the Scottish National party, said the UK government-funded programmes he visited on Thursday were proof the UK was an effective and successful partnership. Those included a Lighthouse laboratory processing Covid samples in Glasgow, a new mass vaccination centre set up by the Royal Scottish Dragoon Guards in Castlemilk in the city, and the Valneva vaccines factory in Livingston, which has been contracted by the UK government to supply up to 100m doses later this year. “This is a huge national effort as a result of investment by the UK government,” he said. “I believe very, very strongly we’re better off with the current arrangements. “I think people can be very, very proud of the achievements of Scottish science, of Scottish business and of Scotland, because they’re achieving astonishing things at the moment but I think they can also be proud of what Britain is achieving.” Johnson’s visit to Scotland was criticised on Wednesday by Sturgeon, who questioned whether it was justified and met the strict criteria for essential travel during the UK-wide lockdown.
She said: “We have a duty to lead by example, and if we are going to suggest that we don’t take these rules as seriously as we should it gets harder to convince other people.” Stuart McDonald, the SNP MP whose constituency includes the community centre in Castlemilk where Johnson visited British troops, said the prime minister should have stayed at home. “The prime minister’s visit to Castlemilk – a community his party has hit hard – was wrong. It’s right to thank the armed forces who have helped in the fight against Covid, but the best way to do it is to pay them properly, improve their conditions & better support their families,” McDonald tweeted. Keith Brown MSP, the Scottish National party’s deputy leader, said: “Clearly, Boris Johnson is rattled. By branding this campaign trip as ‘essential’, this is clearly a prime minister in panic, who knows the Tories are losing the argument on independence.” However, Keir Starmer, the UK Labour leader, told LBC it was “perfectly legitimate” for the prime minister to tour vaccination sites and check the strategy was working. Police Scotland also rejected complaints that Johnson had broken the Covid lockdown rules. The force said it was “a working visit in his official capacity as prime minister”. “He is the prime minister of the United Kingdom,” Starmer said. “It is important that he travels to see what’s going on, on the ground. I understand he is going to see a vaccine centre, going to talk to the NHS. I would expect the prime minister to do that, frankly.” With the Scottish National party on course for a majority in May’s Holyrood elections, the polls suggest voters have welcomed Sturgeon’s confident leadership during the pandemic and have deep-seated doubts about Johnson’s competence. Her personal ratings have soared while Johnson’s have continued to remain rock-bottom, and Sturgeon’s demands for a second independence referendum will be central to the SNP’s election campaign. While support for the Scottish Tories rose in the polls during Theresa May’s leadership to 27%, it has fallen since Johnson took over, to as low as 19%.