EDINBURGH London will not help Scotland to hold another referendum on seceding from the United Kingdom during the current parliament ending in 2020, British defence minister Michael Fallon said on Thursday.
“No, forget it,” Fallon replied in an interview with the Herald newspaper of Scotland, asked if he would facilitate a new vote on independence. Asked about that again on BBC Radio Scotland, Fallon said: “We’ve made it clear that there’s no need for a second referendum.”
He said Nicola Sturgeon, the head of Scotland’s devolved government and leader of the secessionist movement, should respect the result of the 2014 referendum in which 55 percent of Scots voted to remain part of the UK.
Sturgeon said on Twitter it would be a “disastrous move” for London to block a second Scottish independence referendum.
(Reporting by Andy Bruce, Elisabeth O’Leary, Alistair Smout)
