After Scotland Decisively Rejects Brexit and the Tories in General Election, SNP's Sturgeon Calls for Second Independence Referendum

Hours after celebrating her party’s decisive showing and Scotland’s rejection of the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom’s general election Thursday, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Friday said she would move to put forward a second referendum on Scottish independence.

Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party (SNP) won 47 of Scotland’s 59 seats in British Parliament Thursday night, with the Tories holding onto just six seats, Labour maintaining one, and the center-left Liberal Democrat party holding onto four seats.

“I have just won an election on the strength of the argument that it’s Scotland’s right to choose,” Sturgeon said Thursday night as she celebrated SNP’s landslide.

Sturgeon elaborated on the mandate Friday morning at a podium marked with the words “Scotland’s Choice,” saying Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson must give Scotland the power to vote on independence.

“I accept regretfully that [Johnson] has a mandate for Brexit in England. But he has no mandate whatsoever to take Scotland out of the European Union… Scotland’s future must be in Scotland’s hands,” Sturgeon said. “Given what I fear the Tory government now has in store for Scotland, that right to choose our own future has never been more important or more urgent.”

Sturgeon said she had directed the Scottish government to “publish the detailed democratic case for a transfer of power to enable a referendum to be put beyond legal challenge.”

The SNP plans to begin moving toward a referendum next week.

Thursday’s election results came five years after Scotland’s first independence referendum failed, with 55% of Scots voting to remain in the United Kingdom.

Nearly two years after the first referendum in 2014, Scottish voters decisively voted “Remain” in the first vote on the Conservative’ Brexit plan.

The first minister pointed out that Tories in Scotland had run almost exclusively on a message of opposing a Scottish independence referendum.