Scotland must wait for referendum

Senior Cabinet member Michael Gove has used the fifth anniversary of the Brexit referendum to quash the suggestion that there could be a second vote on independence for Scotland any time soon.

The 2016 Brexit referendum saw the United Kingdom as a whole vote by 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent to leave the European Union, a process that was only finally completed just before Christmas last year, but whose still-emerging consequences continue to have a significant impact on daily life for individuals and businesses across the UK.

Despite that majority verdict across the whole of the UK, however, the vote in Scotland was 62 percent to 38 percent in favor of remaining, and the aftermath of this has fuelled support for another referendum in Scotland over whether its future should be continuing as part of the UK, or as an independent nation.

A previous vote in 2014 saw the people of Scotland decide by a margin of 55 percent to 45 to remain part of the union, but in the 2021 Scottish elections, the Scottish National Party, or SNP, campaigned on a platform of holding a second referendum, and was returned as the biggest party.

"I think it's foolish to talk about a referendum now - we're recovering from (COVID-19)," Gove, the most high-profile Scot in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government, told the Daily Telegraph. "It seems to me to be at best reckless, at worst folly, to try to move the conversation on to constitutional division when people expect us to be working together in order to deal with these challenges."

Gove and Johnson campaigned for the Leave cause in the 2016 referendum, and both challenged for the leadership following David Cameron's resignation when the result became clear.

However, Johnson soon pulled out of the running, and in an interview with the BBC in June 2016, Gove said: "I came in the last few days, reluctantly and firmly, to the conclusion that while Boris has great attributes he was not capable of uniting that team and leading the party and the country in the way that I would have hoped."

Five years on, however, Gove is championing Johnson's ability to hold the union together, calling him "a help" who should visit Scotland more often to dispel what he called an "SNP mind game" suggesting distance between Johnson and Scotland.

To underline this, Gove said that there was no chance of another referendum happening before the next general election, which is due in 2024.

"The Prime Minister is completely focused on making sure that, for the lifetime of this parliament, we increase economic opportunity, we provide people with the chance to make more of their lives, take control of their futures," he said. "And that's quite rightly what the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom's focus should be."