Is Scotland free to leave the UK?
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2022
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Supreme Court has ruled against the Scottish Parliament holding a new independence referendum without approval from Westminster. Is this the end of the fight for Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party?
Lewis is joined by SNP MP Stewart Hosie and Wendy Chamberlain, Liberal Democrat MP for North East Fife, to pick apart both sides of the debate.
He's also joined by Financial Times’ journalist Sebastian Payne to discuss PMQs, as well as his new book ‘The Fall of Boris Johnson: The Full Story’, about the former PM’s final days in office.
Planning: Melissa Tutesigensi
Socials: Georgia Foxwell
Production: Ellie Clifford and Gabriel Radus
Deputy Editor: Tom Hughes
Executive Producer: Dino Sofos
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Scottish Parliament does not have the power to legislate for a referendum on Scottish independence. |
| 0:06.9 | It might have been expected. It might have been factored in. But today, that Supreme Court judgment |
| 0:13.6 | marked the latest affray in a constitutional struggle which has waxed and waned since 2014, |
| 0:24.3 | since before 2014, and that independence referendum. The latest tug of war between two seats of power, two parties, two parliaments. |
| 0:32.6 | Today's podcast, what the Supreme Court said, what it means, how it plays out, whether there is any path now for a new referendum. |
| 0:41.8 | Whether, most crucially of all, it can be said that Scotland is in a union against its will. |
| 0:48.6 | It's Lewis here. Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 0:54.0 | The news agents. The news agents. |
| 0:55.8 | The more contempt the Westminster establishment shows for Scottish democracy, |
| 0:59.8 | the more certain it is that Scotland will vote yes when the choice does come to be made. |
| 1:05.8 | Nicholas Sturgeon, speaking this morning, First Minister of Scotland, |
| 1:09.7 | as you might expect, reacting with |
| 1:11.5 | fury. So what she says is now a question of Scottish democracy, not just Scottish independence |
| 1:19.6 | being on the line. What does she mean by that? Well, in order to answer that, you have to go back |
| 1:25.2 | a bit. In 2014, there was a referendum on Scottish independence because in 2011, the SMP won an outright majority in Holyrood, the Scottish Parliament. |
| 1:35.7 | David Cameron, then Prime Minister, and Alex Salmon, then First Minister, signed the Edinburgh Agreement, which devolved on a one-time basis the power from Westminster to |
| 1:47.1 | Holyrood to have a referendum via, in the jargon of independence, a Section 30 order. |
| 1:53.9 | All the political parties agreed. There was no question whatever about its authority or |
| 1:59.8 | legitimacy. Fast forward to today, and the reason the |
| 2:03.8 | Supreme Court was adjudicating is because those conditions, that agreement between Parliament's and |
| 2:09.8 | governments no longer exist. Some of the conditions are the same. After the 2021 Scottish |
| 2:15.7 | parliamentary elections, there has been, as in 2011, a pro-independence |
... |
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