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.”
‘ABUSE OF POWER’: Lee Chun-yi allegedly used a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon and take his wife to restaurants, media reports said Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) resigned on Sunday night, admitting that he had misused a government vehicle, as reported by the media. Control Yuan Vice President Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) yesterday apologized to the public over the issue. The watchdog body would follow up on similar accusations made by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and would investigate the alleged misuse of government vehicles by three other Control Yuan members: Su Li-chiung (蘇麗瓊), Lin Yu-jung (林郁容) and Wang Jung-chang (王榮璋), Lee Hung-chun said. Lee Chun-yi in a statement apologized for using a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a
Taiwan yesterday denied Chinese allegations that its military was behind a cyberattack on a technology company in Guangzhou, after city authorities issued warrants for 20 suspects. The Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau earlier yesterday issued warrants for 20 people it identified as members of the Information, Communications and Electronic Force Command (ICEFCOM). The bureau alleged they were behind a May 20 cyberattack targeting the backend system of a self-service facility at the company. “ICEFCOM, under Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party, directed the illegal attack,” the warrant says. The bureau placed a bounty of 10,000 yuan (US$1,392) on each of the 20 people named in
The High Court yesterday found a New Taipei City woman guilty of charges related to helping Beijing secure surrender agreements from military service members. Lee Huei-hsin (李慧馨) was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for breaching the National Security Act (國家安全法), making illegal compacts with government employees and bribery, the court said. The verdict is final. Lee, the manager of a temple in the city’s Lujhou District (蘆洲), was accused of arranging for eight service members to make surrender pledges to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in exchange for money, the court said. The pledges, which required them to provide identification
INDO-PACIFIC REGION: Royal Navy ships exercise the right of freedom of navigation, including in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, the UK’s Tony Radakin told a summit Freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region is as important as it is in the English Channel, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin said at a summit in Singapore on Saturday. The remark came as the British Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, the HMS Prince of Wales, is on an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific region as head of an international carrier strike group. “Upholding the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and with it, the principles of the freedom of navigation, in this part of the world matters to us just as it matters in the
RSS