UK PM: Scots referendum ‘not remotely on cards’
Print Edition
BRITISH Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday that a second Scottish independence referendum was “not remotely on the cards,” but he would consider nationalist demands for greater powers to be devolved from London to Scotland.
Cameron was speaking after meeting Scotland’s secessionist leader Nicola Sturgeon in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital, just over a week after her Scottish National Party won almost every seat in Scotland in the general election, straining Britain’s unity nine months after a referendum saved it.
Scots rejected independence last year by 55-45 percent, and asked whether he would veto another such referendum, Cameron told the BBC: “I don’t think it’s remotely on the cards.”
“I’m very clear: we had a referendum, it had a decisive outcome. The choice now is what sort of future for Scotland in the United Kingdom.”
Basking in the afterglow of her party’s stunning victory last week when it won 56 of 59 Scottish seats in the United Kingdom’s parliament, Sturgeon used the meeting to tell Cameron she wanted him to go well beyond an existing deal to grant more powers to the devolved Scottish government.
Cameron had already agreed to further dismantle Britain’s highly centralized system of government and to give Scotland, which already enjoys a large degree of autonomy, new tax-raising powers.
But Sturgeon said she’d told Cameron she wanted him to go well beyond a deal reached last year after a process known as the Smith Commission.
“I have said that we will put forward proposals for devolution further than the Smith Commission proposals,” she said after the meeting, saying Scotland wanted a greater say over business taxes, employment legislation, the minimum wage and welfare payments.
Cameron said he would look at the proposals, but made no promises he would agree to them.
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