LABOUR leadership hopeful Lisa Nandy has pledged to "never interfere" in devolved policymaking if she becomes Labour leader - two weeks after suggesting Scotland should "look to Catalonia" for ways to defeat "divisive nationalism".
During a visit to a McVitie's biscuit factory in Glasgow, Nandy said she believes the party's stance on independence should be shaped by Scottish Labour.
It comes two weeks after Nicola Sturgeon called on her to apologise for her Catalonia comments saying people would be "mortified".
The Wigan MP suggested Scotland should take cues from Spain when dealing with the issue of independence, despite large-scale civil unrest across the autonomous region over an unsanctioned referendum.
In a television interview with BBC presenter Andrew Neil, Nandy suggested Scottish independence could be defeated by a “social justice agenda” and suggested socialists across the world had been "beaten over and over" by nationalists.
The Wigan MP was challenged by Neil, who put it to her that the SNP's brand of nationalism is not "hard right" and instead goes "hand in hand with social justice".
So I’m guessing @lisanandy will deal with Scottish nationalism/ambitions of independence the same way Spain dealt with Catalonia? Beating voters at polling stations, jailing political & civic leaders? For all the praise in this interview, this stands out. pic.twitter.com/4TI6ehrZ0J
— Ruwayda (@RuwaydaMustafah) January 15, 2020
Ms Nandy responded by arguing that it suits the SNP to keep the argument about independence going because it meant no one in Scotland was "paying attention to their record, which is frankly appalling".
She said: "We should look outwards to other parts of the world where they've had to deal with divisive nationalism.”
"We should seek to discover the lessons from when, in brief moments in history in places like Catalonia and Quebec, that we have managed to go and beat narrow, divisive nationalism with a social justice agenda."
Catalonia's 2017 independence referendum saw police violence against voters and ballot boxes seized by authority figures.
Hundreds of people have been injured in violent clashes between police and independence supporters in several demonstrations since then.
Now Nandy has said that while opposed to independence, Labour's decision over whether to support another referendum "should be driven by Scottish Labour".
In arguing that the UK party needs to put more trust in Scottish Labour, she said on Monday: "If I'm honest, in recent years, we just haven't shown the level of respect to Scottish Labour at a UK level that we ought to.
"We've imposed decisions, whether it's around policies, whether it's around resources, whether it's around candidates, too many of those decisions are made in Westminster.
"There's a very, very strong feeling here that UK Labour needs to be much more respectful.
"Scottish Labour makes policy on devolved issues, I will never interfere with that as the leader of the Labour Party because if we don't show, at a UK-level, that we trust Scottish Labour, why would we expect the Scottish people to do the same?"
Ms Nandy said that federalism - advocated by rival Keir Starmer - "isn't the solution", but wanted to see a "much deeper settlement that cascades power out in this country".
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"If you go to Aberdeenshire - where I spent quite a lot of time as the shadow energy secretary - often people feel as shut out from Holyrood as they do from Westminster," she said.
"If Labour wants to see a much more empowered country in every nation and region in the UK, then we have to walk the walk, not just talk the talk."
The Wigan MP said she visited the factory to listen to former Labour voters who had stopped supporting the party and said that workers told her: "Labour is not a party that is for working-class people any more".
"A lot of people in the factory weren't shy about telling me the depths and strengths of feeling that Labour has been moving away from them for some time," she said.
"They want to hear from us what we are actually going to do to work with the people of Scotland in order to provide a better alternative to the nightmare that we are seeing unfold under Boris Johnson.
"They don't want to see us talking about other political parties, they want to see us talking about our vision - a positive vision for the future of the UK - and we've got to win the argument on independence."
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