Brexit: Sturgeon urges 'common sense' alternative

By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal

LONDON

With the clock ticking on Brexit becoming a reality next March, Scotland’s first minister reiterated on Monday that remaining in the EU single market and customs union would be the best option for the whole of the U.K.

Speaking at an event held by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), Nicola Sturgeon revealed a new Scottish government paper detailing a "common sense" alternative to British Prime Minister May’s current Brexit plan.

Sturgeon’s comments came ahead of an informal EU summit in Brussels where May will make a short presentation on the U.K.’s ideas on the final Brexit deal.

"The UK government has spent two years asserting that no deal is better than a bad deal,” Sturgeon said.

"However, they will almost certainly try to railroad MPs into accepting a bad or blindfold deal on the grounds that no deal would be a catastrophe,” she said.

"They are threatening us with fire, to make us choose the frying pan,” she added.

"But MPs do not have to fall for that false choice and I would argue that no self-respecting parliament would fall for that false choice,” she warned lawmakers.

‘Other options’

Underlining that “other options are available,” Sturgeon said the single market and customs union option that she has “consistently argued for” and “will set out again today is one such option."

She said those alternative options will require more time and “may well necessitate a request to extend Article 50,” the part of the Lisbon Treaty on withdrawing from the EU.

"But that surely must be preferable to pressing ahead in a reckless and damaging manner," Sturgeon said.

She added: "Voting against a bad or blindfold deal isn't a vote for no deal -- it would be a vote for a better deal.

"Indeed, voting against a bad or blindfold deal Brexit when the opportunity arises, if it does later this year, is the only chance the House of Commons will have to reset the negotiations and think again before it is too late."

Sturgeon last week said the chaotic handling of Brexit over the past two years made her more “confident than ever” that her country will be “independent."

“Brexit is about turning inwards, pulling up the drawbridge, retreating from the world,” Sturgeon told the SNP's autumn conference, hailing independence as the “opposite of Brexit."

A September 2014 referendum on independence saw 62 percent of Scots vote in favor of remaining in the U.K.

In March 2017, Sturgeon had said the Scottish regional government will seek a second referendum on independence to be held by the spring of 2019.

Sturgeon has previously stated that she would update the Scottish National Party on her plans about the second referendum after the central U.K. government revealed the terms of a Brexit deal, which is still to be agreed between the country and the EU.

Scotland is set to leave the EU, as part of the U.K., in March 2019.