ORGANISERS of a “flashmob” demonstration at the Scottish Parliament tomorrow hope 500 people will attend to call for a second independence referendum despite the forecast cold weather and the lateness of notice for the protest.

Dave Llewellyn, below, the activist who helped create the Hands Off Our Parliament event last year and then organised the 500-mile walk for independence, has called the event Now Is The Time.

The National:

It will start at 11am and is expected to last to 3pm with an “open mic” on hand for anyone who wishes to speak.

Llewellyn told The National: “In 72 days Scotland is going to be ripped out of one union that benefits us to appease the arrogance of another that has systematically abused us for over 300 years, no more so than in the past 12 months when our triple-lock mandate has been sneered at and disrespected. That’s the same people who called a snap election in 2017 to override the will of the people in 2015 in the hope that they would get a better result.

“While Westminster’s chickens come home to roost and they run around cobbling the latest ‘deal’ that can attract enough votes to keep their faction in power, they still cannot admit that the best possibility that would tick all the boxes and give something to everyone who voted was put on the table by the Scottish Government more than a year ago.

“The Scottish Government has been ignored. Its valiant attempts to undo the power grab with the Continuity Bill were vandalised by process to delay it while the Scotland Act was rewritten by stealth. Our Parliament was retrospectively neutered by subterfuge in our ‘precious union of equals’.

“The SS Britannic is on the rocks and the only thing that British nationalists can do to set it free is to make paper sails of Union flags and stick them on Scottish produce in the hope that a strong wind will lift it off.

“Last March and in July we turned up in numbers to defend our Parliament. We failed in that attempt. It is a consequence of our inability to grasp the nettle and take our message to the people. Brexit would not have happened in an independent Scotland. So for a moment forget Brexit. It is only a symptom of the disease.

“The indyref2 campaign has already started. We didn’t call it and I believe that was a mistake. We allowed the Unionists to choose the ground . “The ‘hold, hold’ analogy has had its time. We are under heavy assault and we need to be able to fight back. We need a word, one word, from our politicians and that word is ‘now’.

“We were asked to trust Nicola. We do. Nicola trust us. Before it’s too late. Come and join us at Holyrood tomorrow.”