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 is leading, as a powerful alliance of four countries working together to defeat the pandemic.
Instead, he found himself getting deeper into a discussion about whether Scotland should be allowed to hold another referendum on independence, just seven years after it last voted on the matter.
The British Prime Minister has rejected calls for a new vote, insisting that even activists for independence, including Scotland’s leader Nicola Sturgeon, agreed at the time that the 2014 plebiscite was a one-off event. But he then went further than before in discussing what should be considered in a future referendum, including the future of the currency.
“We don’t really know what that referendum should accomplish,” Johnson said in a pooled interview. “We don’t know what would happen to the military, we don’t know what would happen to the crown, the pound, the State Department.”
Johnson’s bigger point was that by working together, the four countries of the UK can pool resources and fight the pandemic.