FORMER Scottish Greens MSP Andy Wightman has revealed that he won’t support another independence referendum until support for leaving the Union is “sustained”.
Wightman, who quit the party in 2020 over “intolerance” towards discussing trans rights and left the Parliament months later, also offered criticism of the SNP’s language around democracy in the wake of last week’s Supreme Court decision.
As the court found Holyrood requires Westminster’s consent to hold a new referendum – but the UK Government has ruled out granting the necessary Section 30 order – the First Minister argued that the debate is now about democracy.
Just last year, the Scottish electorate returned a majority of pro-independence MSPs to Holyrood.
“We should be in no doubt, as of today democracy is what is at stake,” Nicola Sturgeon said following the judgment. She vowed that her party will launch a major campaign in “defence of Scottish democracy”.
Land campaigner Wightman took issue with the language in a thread on social media.
“I have never supported an indyref in 2023 and I don’t support one at all until there is sustained support for it (referendums should be about affirming popular opinion not taking a divided electorate marginally over the 50% threshold),” he wrote.
“I am thus genuinely shocked to be told by the First Minister of Scotland that I am (by implication) not part of ‘Scotland’s democracy movement’. I have been arguing for better (especially local) democracy all my adult life.”
It comes after opposition parties branded the SNP messaging on democracy “Trumpian”.
Scottish LibDem leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has been among those comparing the FM to former US president Donald Trump.
Responding to Wightman’s posts, he again used the term. “Andy Wightman, here. Quite understandably choosing not to get on Nicola’s trump train,” the MSP wrote.
Meanwhile, Scotland’s only remaining Labour MP Ian Murray called Wightman “a voice of sense and reason”.
But independence supporters were less positive about Wightman’s argument. David Francis asked why Scotland should set an “artificially high threshold” for asking about self-determination, comparing it to Labour’s 40% rule in the 1970s.
And activist Steven Marwick asked: “So, by your reckoning are we meant to be stuck in the broken UK forever under a Tory government we didn't vote for, with a Brexit we rejected, just because a ‘divided electorate’ marginally won a No vote at the last time of asking?”
Over the last year, polls have shown Yes and No roughly neck-and-neck. Scots are less convinced that a referendum should be held in 2023.
But last week, following the Supreme Court’s decision, a Channel 4 poll found that 50% of Scots would vote SNP at the next General Election if it meant leaving the Union.
