Nicola Sturgeon Wants Second Independence Referendum for Scotland

In 2014, Scotland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom in an independence referendum. Two years later, Scotland voted overwhelmingly (62 percent to 38 percent) to remain part of the European Union during the Brexit referendum (the UK as a whole voted to leave by 52%). Now, a large number of Scots would like to revisit the decision to remain part of the UK.

To that end: Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said she will seek the right for Scotland to hold a second referendum on Scottish independence.

Ms Sturgeon said she wanted a vote to be held between the autumn of 2018 and the spring of the following year. That would coincide with the expected conclusion of the UK's Brexit negotiations.

The Scottish first minister said the move was needed to protect Scottish interests in the wake of the UK voting to leave the EU.

She said she would ask the Scottish Parliament next week to request a Section 30 order from Westminster. The order would be needed to allow a fresh legally-binding referendum on independence to be held.

...Ms Sturgeon said Scotland stood at a "hugely important crossroads", and insisted she would continue to attempt to reach a compromise with the UK government.

But she added: "I will take the steps necessary now to make sure that Scotland will have a choice at the end of this process. A choice of whether to follow the UK to a hard Brexit, or to become an independent country able to secure a real partnership of equals with the rest of the UK and our own relationship with Europe."

...Ms Sturgeon said it was "important that Scotland is able to exercise the right to choose our own future at a time when the options are clearer than they are now, but before it is too late to decide on our own path."

That sounds pretty reasonable.

Unsurprisingly, British Prime Minister Theresa May did not, accusing the SNP of setting Scotland on a course of "uncertainty and division" and sniffing: "The tunnel vision that SNP has shown today is deeply regrettable."

[May] insisted that the majority of people in Scotland did not want another vote on the issue.

..."Instead of playing politics with the future of our country, the Scottish government should focus on delivering good government and public services for the people of Scotland. Politics is not a game."

If you read that and thought: "Oh dear. That sounds rather presumptuous and condescending toward the Scottish people and their elected representatives," you are correct! Welcome to British politics! And also eleventy thousand years of history!

Note that Sturgeon isn't purporting to speak for the entirety of Scotland in calling for a second independence referendum. To the absolute contrary, she is merely acknowledging there have been some major geopolitical changes in the interim, and that it would be wise to give Scots another opportunity to weigh in.

Scotland is divided on the question of independence; they are less divided on the question of Brexit, however, which may have changed the balance on independence. Sturgeon is seeking the right to find out.

And May is lecturing her like she's a naughty schoolchild about how she ought to be spending her time and what her people feel, in a grim obfuscation of the critical importance of democratic processes. Which is to say nothing of the temerity of the British PM scolding Scottish leaders for a supposed failure to provide "good government and public services for the people of Scotland."

If there's someone treating politics like "a game" here, it isn't Nicola Sturgeon.