Photographer: WPA Pool / Getty Images
Photographer: WPA Pool / Getty Images
Boris Johnson went to Scotland to try to demonstrate the benefits of the UK he leads, as a powerful alliance of four nations working together to defeat the pandemic.
Instead, he found himself being dragged deeper into a discussion of whether Scotland should be allowed to hold another independence referendum, just seven years after the last vote on the issue.
The British Prime Minister rejected requests for a new vote and insisted that even pro-independence campaigners, including Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon, agreed at the time that the 2014 referendum was a unique event in a generation. But he went further than before in discussing what any future referendum would need to consider, including the currency’s future.
“We don’t really know what this referendum is going to achieve,” Johnson said at a news conference. “We don’t know what would happen to the army, we don’t know what would happen to the crown, the pound, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
Johnson’s main point was that, working together, the four nations of the United Kingdom can pool resources and fight the pandemic.