Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon gave a speech on Tuesday (April 4) highlighting the positive role Scottish independence will have in the world while warning of the negative consequences of Brexit.
Sturgeon, who is the head of the Scottish National Party (SNP), has demanded a second Scottish independence referendum. The first referendum in September 2014 resulted in 55 percent of Scottish voters rejecting the independence. Sturgeon proposes the second referendum to be held in late 2018 or early 2019, once the terms for the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union have become clearer.
The Brexit referendum last June has shown a difference of interest between the Scottish and the English. While voters in England and Wales chose to leave the EU, voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland chose to stay.
Sturgeon said: “If we don’t give people in Scotland a choice, we will have to accept a course of action determined by a U.K. government that most people in Scotland didn’t vote for. A course which will be deeply damaging to our economy and to our society, perhaps for decades, possibly for generations to come.”
The Scottish first minister is on a U.S. four-day tour; she is scheduled to speak at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Wednesday (April 5).
