Scots Tory leader Douglas Ross has been accused by the SNP of a “shameless betrayal of democracy” by refusing to acknowledge that the basic human right to self determination, as defined by the United Nations, applies to the people of Scotland.
During an interview on the BBC’s Sunday Show, Mr Ross was asked to justify his and his party’s anti-democratic position denying an independence referendum, despite the SNP Scottish Government having been given a cast-iron mandate to hold one in last year’s Scottish election.
When pressed, Mr Ross refused to confirm he agrees that Scotland’s democratically-elected government has the right to ask the people of Scotland their opinion on this fundamental question.
SNP MSP Rona Mackay said:
“In his desperation to defend the indefensible, Douglas Ross is increasingly like Donald Trump.
“Denying the reality of the SNP’s 2021 election victory – which was even greater than the one of 2011 – makes him sound exactly like the former US President and his supporters.
“Ross reverts to a ludicrous argument about recent opinion polls while, at the same time, trying to ignore the result of the Scottish election – the poll of Scottish opinion that actually matters in a democracy – which returned an overwhelming mandate for an independence referendum.
“It is a damning indictment of the Tories’ destruction of standards in public life that they are prepared to deny Scotland even basic UN human rights.
“That is a shameless betrayal of democracy.
“As well as denying democracy, Douglas Ross continues to prioritise Westminster control over the needs of the people of Scotland.
“Yet he can’t answer why, under that Westminster control, a country as resource rich as Scotland is lagging so far behind almost all of our European neighbours on a range of economic league tables.
“Many of our European neighbours are wealthier, fairer and happier than the UK, and they show what Scotland can achieve with the powers of independence.
“The people of Scotland have secured a cast-iron democratic mandate to decide their own future when they elected the biggest pro-independence majority of MSPs ever returned to Holyrood – and the Trump-like efforts of Douglas Ross, Anas Sarwar and others to deny that democratic reality are increasingly absurd.”
