Gordon Brown launches new campaign to keep Scotland in UK
The former Prime Minister says Our Scottish Future will make the “positive, progressive and patriotic case for Scotland in Britain”.
Gordon Brown says people want “more co-operation, not less” as he launches a fresh campaign to make sure Scotland stays in the UK.
The former Labour prime minister has set up think tank he set up Our Scottish Future, which he believes will become a “campaigning movement” to make the “positive, progressive and patriotic case for Scotland in Britain”.
His comments came in the wake of the SNP winning a fourth term in government in Holyrood in last week's Scottish election.
And while Nicola Sturgeon’s party fell just short of an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament, with the number of SNP MSPs increasing from 63 to 64, the record eight Scottish Greens who were also elected means a majority of MSPs are in favour of Scotland having a second referendum.
Ms Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, has already told the Prime Minister that the Holyrood election result means that “question of a referendum is now a matter of when - not if”.
Mr Brown, who played a key role in the successful campaign to keep Scotland in the union back in 2014, spoke out as another veteran Labour politician warned there would now be a second vote on independence.
Former Scottish first minister, Henry McLeish, writing in The Scotsman, said: “There will be another referendum, three to five years ahead after we've recovered from the Covid crisis.”
Mr Brown, meanwhile, said that Our Scottish Future would argue for a “reformed” United Kingdom, as he called for a change of tactics from the Prime Minister.
The former Labour leader complained that Mr Johnson's “muscular unionism” was “at odds with mainstream Scottish opinion”.
Mr Brown complained that the Prime Minister “ends up asserting Britishness in competition with Scottishness”.