NICOLA Sturgeon and Jeremy Corbyn have pledged their parties will join forces at Westminster to oppose the Prime Minister’s draft withdrawal agreement on Brexit and ensure they do not end up backing a no deal by default.
She said she wanted to ensure MPs were offered an alternative to backing the PM’s plan or being forced into a situation where they supported the UK crashing out at the end of March.
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The First Minister met with the Prime Minister and opposition leaders at Westminster on Tuesday to discuss the UK’s departure from the European Union.
Ahead of the meeting, she said she believed there is a potential Commons majority for remaining in the single market and customs union.
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Earlier the First Minister met with opposition party leaders, including Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, the LibDems’s Vince Cable and the Greens’ Caroline Lucas.
Afterwards her spokesman said: “It is clear that we are united in our opposition to the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal, which puts jobs and living standards at risk. We agreed that we will not be boxed into supporting no deal. The SNP has consistently said we will work with other parties to prevent a damaging Brexit and we will continue to do so.”
There was also opportunity for some diversion during the FM’s day and she reportedly swung by the Tory European Research Group meeting, presumably to say hi to its chair, the arch Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg. Or perhaps not. She did, however, pop her head around the door of their meeting and they all cheered.
In another moment of relative levity, Sturgeon bumped into Boris Johnson as she headed into May’s Commons office.
“Good luck,” said Johnson.
“Want me to tell her anything?” was Sturgeon’s reply.
Meanwhile, Labour’s response to talks with the First Minister was positive. A spokesman for the party said: “Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had a constructive meeting with Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. They discussed their common opposition to Theresa May’s botched Brexit deal and determination to work across Parliament to prevent a disastrous no-deal outcome.”
READ MORE: Corbyn rapped for ignoring Catalan letter with 200 signatures
During the meeting Cable set out his priority to “build the momentum for a people’s vote” which Sturgeon has previously promised to back but Corbyn has been less supportive.
“I am glad the other opposition parties were today able to agree to work together to achieve a people’s vote, including the option to remain in the EU. Meanwhile, Labour is missing in action.”
Meanwhile, it emerged Sturgeon told a Women for Independence conference at the weekend that she would ask people in Scotland to vote at the next election on whether they want a new independence referendum if a future request for a new plebiscite is rejected by May.
After dismissing suggestions from some delegates that she should hold a Catalan-style vote, without the approval of Westminster, she said: “The beauty of 2014 was that it was an agreed process. All of this has taken me to the point that I don’t have an easy answer to this. We may get into the situation where the UK Government says: ‘No we’re not going to agree the Section 30 order’ and I think if that happens we need to make the case of how unreasonable that is. And ultimately if the only way through that is to take that to an election and ask the people of Scotland to use an election to say ‘No, we will have absolutely our right to choose’, I think maybe that’s what it will take.”
Six SNP MPs have signed a letter sent by their colleague Angus MacNeil to the PM demanding she say what is her preferred route to allow Scots to achieve independence. Philippa Whitford, Hannah Bardell, Lisa Cameon, Joanna Cherry, Carol Monaghan and Martyn Day have signed the letter which asks does May prefer a referendum or an election of a majority of SNP MPs as a mandate to negotiate independence.
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