Boris Johnson does not have the moral authority to deny the Scottish people a choice about their future.
A week ago, the Scottish people voted to elect their Parliament in the first Scottish parliamentary election since Brexit.
The outcome is significant. The Scottish people renewed and reinforced the pro-European, pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament—and did so with the highest turnout in the history of Scottish parliamentary elections.
The mandate for a referendum on independence is clear. For comparison: David Cameron called the EU Referendum after winning the 2015 general election with just 36.9% of the vote, Boris Johnson pushed through Brexit after being elected by 43.6% of voters, in what was called a Tory landslide. Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP has now won 47.7% of the vote share; results that would have given the SNP 85% of the seats in Parliament if Scotland had the same “first-past-the-post” electoral system as the UK.
Even with Scotland’s proportional electoral system pro-independence parties now have a larger majority in Parliament than ever before. Like the SNP, both the Green Party and the Alba Party published manifestos that promised an independence referendum before the next election, and together, these parties won a majority of the vote share.
Crucially for our campaign, the SNP and the Scottish Greens also included in their manifestos the intention to rejoin the EU as an independent country, reaffirming the democratic mandate to remain in the EU that was expressed by the Scottish people in the Brexit referendum.
Boris Johnson does not have the moral authority to deny the Scottish people a choice about their future.
European media should not be hoodwinked by Johnson into covering the Scottish elections as a sideshow. The outcome of these elections might not only define the future of the United Kingdom but also greatly impact the future of Europe.
It is time for Europeans everywhere to help Scots in their campaign for self-determination.
In the next weeks and months our campaign will work tirelessly to mobilise European civil society, raise awareness about Scotland’s unique situation and demand EU institutions to be proactive in expressing our joint solidarity with the citizens of Scotland and in supporting Scotland’s democratic choice about its future.
In this spirit, we invite citizens of each and every European country to join more than 10 thousand fellow Europeans and add their name to our letter to European leaders.
for the future