More than half of Scots now back independence following Britain’s decision to leave the EU, a new poll showed yesterday.
A Panelbase survey for the Sunday Times found that 52 percent of respondents wanted to break with the rest of Britain, with 48 percent opposed.
Scotland rejected independence in a 2014 referendum, but Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon said a second vote was now “highly likely” to prevent Scots being pulled out of the EU against their will.
Photo: AP
In Thursday’s EU referendum, Britain voted by 52 to 48 percent to leave the bloc. However, Scots voted by 62 percent to stay in.
After an emergency Cabinet meeting on Saturday, Sturgeon told reporters said that “a second independence referendum is clearly an option that requires to be on the table and is very much on the table.”
“To ensure that that option is a deliverable one within the required timetable, steps will be taken now to ensure that the necessary legislation is in place. Cabinet this morning formally agreed [to] that work,” she said.
In the independence vote two years ago, Scotland voted by 55 to 45 percent to stay within the UK.
The Panelbase survey, which interviewed 620 adults on Friday and Saturday, found that 52 percent think Scotland is likely to be independent within five to 10 years.
This is up from 30 percent when the same question was asked in April.
“What’s going to happen with the UK is that there are going to be deeply damaging and painful consequences,” Sturgeon told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show. “I want to try and protect Scotland from that.”
Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party leader Ruth Davidson — who opposes independence — said after the EU results came in on Friday that it was not the right time for another vote.
“I do not believe that a second independence referendum will help us achieve that stability nor that it is in the best interests of the people of Scotland,” she said. “The 1.6 million votes cast in this referendum in favor of ‘Remain,’ do not wipe away the 2 million votes that we cast less than two years ago, and we do not address the challenges of leaving the European Union by leaving our own union of nations, our biggest market and our closest friends.”
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