Tony Blair did not foresee the rise of separatists in Scotland: Boris Johnson’s office said in a statement
London:
Scottish independence activists took up comments by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in which he said the creation of a decentralized parliament in Edinburgh had been “a disaster”.
Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon, who is the first minister of the decentralized parliament, tweeted on Monday evening that it “was worth bookmarking these comments by the Prime Minister for the next time the Tories say they do not pose a threat to the powers of the Scottish Parliament.
“The only way to protect and strengthen @ScotParl is to remain independent,” she added.
Prime Minister Johnson told MPs in an online meeting Monday that “decentralization has been a disaster north of the border” and that it was “the former leader of Tony Blair’s biggest mistake”, according to the Sun newspaper.
The Prime Minister’s Office in Downing Street later said in a statement that Johnson had “always supported decentralization, but Tony Blair had not foreseen the rise of separatists in Scotland”.
“Decentralization is great – but not when used by separatists and nationalists to dismantle the UK,” the statement added.
Douglas Ross, who leads the Tories in Scotland, replied that “decentralization has not been a disaster” and that “the SNP’s non-stop obsession with another referendum – over jobs, schools and all the rest – was a disaster “.
Scotland was promised a referendum on decentralization by the Labor Party ahead of the 1997 election, and that promise was kept later that year, leading to the creation of a Scottish Parliament in 1999.
Scotland rejected independence in a 2014 referendum, but pressure for a new referendum has grown since Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016 , a decision opposed by most voters north of the border.
Johnson called MPs from Downing Street, where he is self-isolating after coming into contact with an MP who later tested positive for coronavirus.
(Except for the title, this story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
