Former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has given her “unequivocal support” to the new Scottish independence strategy promoted by her successor and “protege”, Humza Yousaf. Sturgeon made a surprise appearance at the Scottish National Party (SNP) conference four months after being arrested, and released without charge, in the investigation opened into irregular financing of the party.
Sturgeon once proposed the failed plan to hold a second referendum, stopped by the Supreme Court. In exchange, he proposed converting the 2024 general elections as a “de facto referendum”, but it crashed again in the midst of his political fall, also caused by his promotion of the “trans” law that caused a deep division in Scotland.
After several months in the background, she returned to the fore and was received as a true star by her coreligionists, who paid tribute to the nine years in which she led the SNP and achieved the greatest electoral success in two decades. “I’m not the Liz Truss of nationalism,” she said in her political “retreat.”
“I think there is no doubt who is in charge of the party,” he said, referring to his successor Humza Yousaf, 38, the son of Pakistani immigrants, who made his debut as leader at the national conference in Aberdeen and saved the day with the call for unity to support its new independence strategy, with obvious variations on its predecessor.
Instead of putting a date on the horizon for a second sovereignty consultation, after the one held in 2014 in which permanence in the United Kingdom expired by 55% to 45% of the vote, Humza Yousaf proposed the goal of achieving a majority in Scotland in the 2024 general elections and use that result as a “mandate” to demand the holding of a new referendum to the British Government (transferring powers to the Scottish Parliament).
“Vote SNP if you want Scotland to be an independent country, it will say that in the first line of our manifesto,” Yousaf stressed at the closing of the national conference. “A majority of seats would be a victory, direct and simple.”
The “new strategy” of the independence movement would, however, face a new refusal from the central government. The leader of the Labor Party, Keir Starmer, has warned in advance that he does not intend to give in to pressure from the nationalists if he wins the elections and becomes prime minister. Starmer plans to actually use the 2024 elections as a platform to relaunch his party in Scotland (technically tied with the SNP in the polls) by promising greater autonomy within the United Kingdom.
Support for independence (47% compared to 53%) fell as a result of the serious internal crisis of the SNP, according to the average of Statista polls, but the support of the bases and young voters keeps the sovereigntist flame alive, fueled by Humza Yousaf himself despite the circumstances: “The future of our country depends on independence.”