Pro-UK voters have seven days to save Scotland’s recovery and stop another independence referendum, Scottish Conservative leader, Douglas Ross, will say today .
Speaking near the border between Scotland and England, he will call for pro-UK voters to unite and use their peach ballot paper to cast a vote for the Scottish Conservatives. He claims this will stop an SNP majority, as in 2016.
Polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice has said this week that the SNP’s hopes of a majority are “on a knife edge”.
Wednesday’s poll from Lord Ashcroft indicated the SNP are on course for a majority.
Tuesday’s Panelbase poll suggested an independence super-majority was more likely, all proving, if nothing else, that polls can have different results.
Douglas Ross will say: “Just as in 2014, Scotland stands on the brink. The SNP want to rip up our country and they want to do it at the worst possible moment.
“Polls show the SNP are on the cusp of a majority and, backed by the Greens and Alex Salmond, the threat of a nationalist supermajority is very real.
“They are intent on hijacking the Scottish Parliament for the sole purpose of delivering a second independence referendum.
“Instead of setting up programmes to protect and create jobs, they will be inventing an economic case for independence and trying to design a new currency.
“Instead of supporting our NHS to work through a backlog of cancelled treatments, they will be planning to dismantle our healthcare procurement system, responsible for the huge success of the vaccine scheme.
“Instead of catching pupils up from a year of disrupted learning, they will be arranging to scrap the Barnett Formula that funds our schools and other public services.
“Instead of Scotland’s two government’s working together for our recovery, they will force a constitutional showdown and court battles.
“Instead of working to rebuild Scotland from a pandemic, they will be working to break up the United Kingdom.
“Instead of an election result that lets the country move on, we will move straight from a Scottish Parliament Election campaign into a second referendum campaign.
“We have only seven days left to save Scotland’s recovery.
“If we do not address the threat next Thursday, the SNP will have a green light to charge ahead with a hard border, just a few hundred yards from where I stand.
“The very future of our country is at stake – and you need to vote for the future you want to see.
“They may be on track to win full control of our Parliament right now, but that outcome is not inevitable. Another referendum is not inevitable.
“The only way to stop a second independence referendum is to using your party list vote on the peach ballot paper for the Scottish Conservatives.
“Even if you have never supported our party before. Even if it’s just this once. Even if you never consider yourself a Conservative.
“In 2016, over 500,000 Scots backed our party, many for the first time, and together we stopped an SNP majority.
“In 2021, if pro-UK voters come together again and use their peach ballots for the Scottish Conservatives, we will stop a referendum and keep Scotland on the road to recovery.”
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
