LABOUR frontbencher Jonathan Ashworth says his party won’t ever support indyref2.
Appearing on the Sky News show Sophy Ridge on Sunday, the shadow health secretary was asked if his party would support the right of Scottish people to undertake a second ballot on the future of the Union.
He answered: “No, no. There are obviously Scottish elections next year and we’ll be campaigning for a Scottish Labour government in the Scottish Parliament. We are not a pro-independence party, we are a party that believes in the strength of the Union between Scotland and England and Wales and Northern Ireland.
“Our policy is not to support an independence referendum. We won’t be campaigning for an independence referendum, we’ll be campaigning to keep the United Kingdom together.”
The comments came as former prime minister Tony Blair said Scottish independence is “a possibility” and Boris Johnson is “not going to be the person who is going to save the Union”.
Appearing on the same programme as Ashworth, Blair told Ridge: “My view of Scotland is there’s been two problems really over the last decade – the first obviously was after Brexit, but then even before that, because the Labour Party went off, in my view, completely the wrong direction in Scotland and the Conservative Party, at least until Ruth Davidson, looked as if they were nowhere, there was no proper opposition to the SNP.
“I think if the Labour Party as it is reviving in England and Wales revives also in Scotland, that would be a significant advantage to preserving the Union.”
Boris Johnson’s recent visit to Orkney and Moray was taken by some critics as a sign of his concern about the future of the UK.
When asked about the Prime Minister’s performance, Blair also chose to criticise Labour’s performance in Scotland, commenting: “We do need a viable opposition in Scotland and they’ve not really had one.
“The Labour Party went off to the left and then played around with nationalist sentiment instead of being clearly in the centre-left position as the opposition, then other than that period of time when Ruth Davidson was leading the Tories there was no-one who was able to provide a coherent alternative to Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP.”
However, Blair said he thinks recently installed Labour leader Keir Starmer is doing “a great job” at the top of the party: “I talk to him from time to time, as I’m sure he does with other former Labour leaders, and I think he’s done a great job.
“He’s made the Labour party competitive again.
“There is still a long way to go on policy but he’s made a really impressive start.”
Blair, who left office in 2007, has called for the UK Government to investigate the issue of potential Russian interference in the EU referendum: “I don’t believe that the referendum result was because of Russian interference, that would be foolish in my view, but you should know and the government should investigate for the future at any rate.
“Cyber-security is going to be a massive, massive question for government and there are governments that want to weaken the West, we know basically why they want to do it, and we’ve just got to make sure that they are all the time constrained.”
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