In January, Sir Keir Starmer told Border Television’s Peter MacMahon that, look, of course an SNP victory in next year’s Holyrood elections would plausibly constitute a mandate for a second independence referendum. It might, indeed, be argued that the SNP have such a mandate already, there being a pro-independence majority in the current Scottish parliament, to say nothing of the next one.
Yesterday, in a series of interviews including one with Sky News’s Beth Rigby, Starmer reiterated this obvious point. There comes a moment when election results must have consequences and an SNP majority or an SNP-Green majority, next May seems an obvious time for such a moment to arise. This was not a controversial view until recently. Ruth Davidson, before she stepped down as leader of the Scottish Conservatives, allowed that a new SNP, or pro-independence, majority at Holyrood would clearly change the game all over again.
Starmer, it should be noted, does not *want* another referendum and not just because he’d rather see the SNP deprived of the parliamentary votes needed to demand one.
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