SCOTTISH Green co-leader Patrick Harvie has insisted the next independence referendum should be held before the end of the year.
Speaking as his party relaunched their Yes campaign at rally in Glasgow, the MSP said the referendum needed to happen before the end of the Brexit transition period on December 31.
He said: “I think it’s important that we do continue to assert the right of Scotland to make a decision along the timescale of the transition period.
“Every member state has had a say, the UK has had a say, Scotland has tried to have a say and been ignored.”
He added: “I think there’s a principled argument for, during the transition period – which means this year – that’s when Scotland should have the right to decide.”
The Green MSP said Boris Johnson would be keeping an eye on the polls and might feel forced to allow a referendum, sooner rather than later, as postponing would only increase support for a Yes vote.
He said: “I don’t see that changing, I see that getting stronger. I think that the UK will recognise at some point that they’re only going to lose the argument more quickly if they just keep saying we’re not allowed to have a say.”
He added: “I think the longer the UK digs its heels in and says ‘naw you cannae’, the more likely people will be to say ‘Yes we will’.
“If you think about it this way, if the Brexiteers were told by the European Union they weren’t allowed to have a referendum, I think that would have made a lot of people who already supported that even more determined and it would have pushed people in the middle in the direction of saying they don’t want to be a part of something that’s telling us what we can and can’t do.”
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