05 June, 2017
Scottish Labour has stepped up its attacks on the SNP by using a new election broadcast to accuse leader Nicola Sturgeon of "playing a broken record" with demands for another independence referendum.
Speaking about Scotland's place in the Brexit negotiations, Ms Sturgeon said: "In 2014, we were told if we voted Yes we would impale our place in the EU".
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May has rebuffed Sturgeon's call for another referendum, promising in her Conservative party's manifesto to block a second vote "unless there is public consent for it to happen".
Ms Sturgeon described the election, which Mrs May called in a bid to increase the Tory majority at Westminster, as an "opportunity to make positive statement about the kind of country we want Scotland to be".
Ms Sturgeon added: " I think as this campaign has worn on, people have come face to face with the consequences of five more years of Tory government and that's not palatable - it means more cuts in public services, it means a risk to jobs with an extreme form of Brexit and it means more people including children being pushed into poverty.
Nicola Sturgeon told the Border Telegraph: "This election is important for the Borders, but it's important for Scotland as a whole". We did that. We were then told that the United Kingdom is a family of nations and Scotland's voice would be heard, that the prime minister wouldn't trigger Article 50 until there had been a United Kingdom position. "That is a democratically unsustainable position".
Nicola Sturgeon has revealed she is a Twitter addict.
Her mother Joan - herself an SNP politician - once joked about her daughter's hard-working tendencies: "She can relax - there's always one eye on the phone, but I think she's fairly relaxed".
She studied law at Glasgow University and stood unsuccessfully for the House of Commons in 1992, aged just 21, before starting her career as a lawyer.
She said the Scottish Government has also failed to tackle A&E waiting times and had presided over a real-terms pay cut for nurses.
Sturgeon wants another Scottish independence referendum to be held between autumn 2018 and spring 2019.
'Now, why I set out those dates is that that is what Theresa May is telling us right now the end of the process will be.
"She has said that the terms of the Brexit deal, the new relationship with Europe, will be known before the United Kingdom exits the European Union in the spring of 2019".
'Now, I'm not in charge of that timetable and that process'.
A recent poll showed that only 37 per cent of Scots wanted a second referendum, but Ms Sturgeon remains popular and her party is expected to retain around 50 of its seats.
Interviewed on Radio 4's Woman's Hour this morning, she said: 'Well I've said, and I said this in 2015 - if the parliamentary arithmetic post the election supported this, I would want the SNP to be part of a progressive alternative to a Tory government.
