The candidates vying to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) have rejected her plan to use the next general election as a ‘de facto referendum’ on Scottish independence.
Humza Yousaf, Kate Forbes, and Ash Regan all said that support for independence would need to rise before they could step up efforts to break Scotland away from the United Kingdom.
Critics have labelled them ‘the three stooges’ for their shared focus on boosting support for separation.
A report by one of the SNP’s economic advisers warned that independence could lead to 253,000 job losses and a 10% contraction in the economy.
Regan likened Scottish independence to the American War of Independence, arguing that referendums are just one way of achieving freedom from Britain.
Yousaf said he would focus on making support for independence a ‘sustainable majority’ view.
While he wasn’t ‘wedded’ to treating the next election as an independence referendum, he said that every election fought by the SNP under his leadership would be about independence.
Miss Regan rejected the idea of fighting the next general election on a single issue but confirmed that any votes for the SNP under her leadership would be considered a vote for independence.
Miss Forbes said that it was not yet the right time for another independence referendum and that the party needed to prepare the ground and make the case for independence to a majority of people.
Critics have accused the SNP leadership candidates of pushing their ‘independence obsession’ instead of concentrating on the priorities of ordinary Scots.
Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said that none of the three candidates was fit to run the country.
Scottish Conservative chairman Craig Hoy said that the bitter infighting was getting worse by the day and that the feuding camps’ only common ground was their obsession with tearing apart the UK.
»Critics label SNP candidates ‘the three stooges’«
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