Sturgeon: Scotland wants different future from rest of UK

Boris Johnson cannot “bludgeon” Scotland into seeing the world in the same way that he does, Nicola Sturgeon has said after telling the new prime minister that the election results made it clear that Scots want a different future to the rest of the UK.

Speaking at the V&A museum in Dundee on Saturday where she joined the Scottish National party’s newly elected MPs, Sturgeon insisted it is unsustainable for the Tories to keep saying no to a fresh vote. While the Conservatives gained a large Commons majority, the SNP took 48 of the 59 Scottish seats.

“I wasn’t sure how much he’d had a chance to catch up with the Scottish results,” Sturgeon said of her conversation with Johnson on Friday.

“I pointed out to him, politely of course after I congratulated him, that the Scottish Tories, having fought the election on the single issue of opposition to an independence referendum, had lost – lost vote share, lost more than half of their seats.

“It was a watershed election on Thursday and it’s very clear that Scotland wants a different future to the one chosen by much of the rest of the UK.

“Scotland showed its opposition to Boris Johnson and the Tories, said no again to Brexit, and made very clear that we want the future of Scotland, whatever that turns out to be, to be decided by people who live here.

“You can’t bludgeon a nation into accepting your view of the world when it is made very clear that it doesn’t have that view of the world.

“It couldn’t really be any clearer from the results of this election that Scotland doesn’t want a Boris Johnson government, it doesn’t want to leave the European Union, and it wants to be able to determine its own future, whatever that future turns out to be.”

The UK could only continue to exist by consent, Sturgeon said, adding that if Johnson has confidence in his case for continuing the union then he should let the people decide, “because he won’t get away with just saying no and trying to bludgeon the nation of Scotland into seeing the world as he does, which most of us don’t”.

Many in the country were worried about the prospect of five years of Tory government led by Johnson, Sturgeon said. Such a “grim reality”, she said, “makes that case for Scotland being able to choose something different all the more urgent and all the more important.”

Sturgeon’s comments came as one of Scotland’s leading Labour politicians, Alison Evison, the president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (Cosla), called for a second referendum on Scotland’s independence and said democracy had become “fragile”.

Writing on Twitter, Evison, who is a Labour councillor in Aberdeenshire, said: “It’s straightforward to me: democracy must be at the core of all we do. Recently it has become fragile and we must strengthen it again. We can strengthen it by enabling the voice of Scotland to be heard through its formal processes & that must mean a referendum on independence.”