Nicola Sturgeon has hailed the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) “historic and extraordinary” fourth consecutive victory in the Scottish Parliament election.
With all the results in, the SNP has finished on 64 seats – one short of a majority – but one more than it won in 2016.
Sturgeon said her priority was to steer the country through the pandemic.
She said she still intended to hold an independence referendum once the crisis passed and there was no democratic justification for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, or anyone else, to attempt to block it
With all seats now declared, the SNP has won 64, the Conservatives 31, Labour 22, the Scottish Greens eight and Liberal Democrats four.
Sturgeon said her party won the most constituency seats and secured the highest share of the constituency vote in the history of devolution.
And she pledged that “the task of building a better Scotland for everyone who lives here will be my priority every single day”.
Sturgeon said her focus in government would be on leading the country through the pandemic and keeping people safe from Covid.
She added: “It is then to kick-start and drive our recovery with an ambitious and transformative programme for government.
“And, yes, when the crisis has passed, it is to give people in Scotland the right to choose their future.
“All of that is what I promised and all of that is what I intend to deliver.”
She said the result of the election meant there was “no democratic justification whatsoever for Boris Johnson or anyone else seeking to block the right of the people of Scotland to choose our future”.
And she insisted that holding a referendum was now “the will of the country”.
Johnson told the Daily Telegraph newspaper earlier on Saturday that it would be “reckless and irresponsible” to hold a referendum right now.
He added, the country needed to “show the same spirit of unity and co-operation that marked our fight against the pandemic” in engineering a Covid-19 recovery. (BBC)
