‘A bold, confident gambit by Scotland’
Plaid Cymru has responded to the announcement made by Nicola Sturgeon that the Scottish Government intends to hold an independence referendum for Scotland on 19 October, 2023. Scotland’s First Minister also outlined plans to deal with legal challenges in the Supreme Court, by pre-emptively seeking the Lord Advocate to refer the planned Independence Referendum Bill to the UK’s Supreme Court.
Plaid Cymru’s spokesperson for the Constitution, Rhys ab Owen MS said:
“Today’s announcement by Nicola Sturgeon is a bold, confident gambit by Scotland – rightly giving their citizens the right to democratically decide on their own future.
“And there is an urgency to do so, as the UK Government continues its mission to undermine the constitutional settlements of the devolved nations of the UK.
“Wales cannot afford to be left behind. As we’ve seen just this week, the UK Government have no qualms in riding roughshod over Wales’s democratically elected government by seeking to scrap a law that protects workers’ rights, undermining the democracy of six elections and two referenda in Wales.
“Like in Scotland, Wales’s future must not be decided by the Westminster elite. It must be decided by the people of Wales.
“As we’ve seen from the response from our own First Minister today, Labour in Wales continue to hold on to hope for a Labour Government in Westminster to solve all of our problems. This is not only not backed up by any commitments from the UK Labour party to protect Welsh devolution, but it is looking evermore unlikely.
“Plaid Cymru has a very simple answer to remove Westminster’s right to run roughshod over our democracy forever – not just in the brief interludes of a Labour Government once every twenty years: and that is independence.
“We will marching at the AUOB rally in Wrexham this Saturday – showing that there’s energy and appetite and demand in Wales for independence and over the next few weeks we will be concluding a series of open meetings across Wales to discuss the future of our nation.
“Now more than ever, we must too start an energising debate about what independence could mean for our nation.”
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