Nicola Sturgeon has said she is ‘struggling to keep up’ with Richard Leonard’s stance on the prospect of a second Scottish independence referendum.
The Scottish Labour leader asked Nicola Sturgeon whether Michael Russell or the Electoral Commission was more neutral in setting the rules of a future independence referendum during First Minister’s Questions.
Leonard said that the Electoral Commission wanted to test question in a future independence referendum and that the Scottish Government was going against the Law Society of Scotland, but the First Minister responded saying that the question was tested in 2014 and said that opposition members wanted to "rig" the process
In a rebuttal to the Labour leader, the First Minister said: “The question was tested by the Electoral Commission. And more than that, the question was tested in the reality of a referendum. And I don’t know anybody in Scotland who say anything other than that question was clear, comprehensible and completely transparent.”
READ MORE: SNP ministers rule our higher Yes threshold in second referendum
She then hit back saying: “I’ve got news for Richard Leonard. The people of Scotland will get the chance to choose a better future than Tory Brexit Britain. If he now accepts it is right to allow the people of Scotland to choose their own future in an independence referendum, I welcome that.
#FMQs LIVE #Indyref2 on the agenda as Nicola Sturgeon faces questions from opposition https://t.co/DUhJhNWpxf pic.twitter.com/AcwUkbvD5e
— HeraldScotland (@heraldscotland) September 26, 2019
"I have to be honest, I’m really struggling to keep up with Richard Leonard’s twists and turns. If I’m understanding right, he is standing up here, demanding we test a question again for a referendum that he says shouldn’t happen and he isn’t going to allow to happen.”
READ MORE: Indyref2 on the agenda as Nicola Sturgeon faces questions from opposition
“That’s the first inconsistency and contradiction in Richard Leonard’s position. Then he says the people of Scotland should have the right to have a referendum at all because we chose our future five years ago”
A fair point by Nicola Sturgeon at #fmqs. By raising the issue of who tests the #indyref2 question, Richard Leonard appears to be conceding there will be a referendum
— Paul Hutcheon (@paulhutcheon) September 26, 2019
She added: “The people of the UK voted on Brexit three years ago but Richard Leonard supports a second Brexit referendum for the whole of the UK, and he seems to have missed all that has changed in the five years since the independence referendum when people like him were telling the people of Scotland that the only way to protect their membership of the European Union was to vote against independence.
"We now know that those promises weren’t worth the paper they were written on.”
“It’s time for Scotland to have the opportunity to choose our future. It is time for Scotland to choose independence.”
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