UK election 2017: Hammer taken to Scottish independence bid

Former Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond and the party’s deputy Angus Robertson have lost their seats.

Nicola Sturgeon arrives at the counting hall in Glasgow yesterday.

The former Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond and the party’s deputy leader, Angus Robertson, have lost their seats in a dramatic night of defeats for the Nationalists.

Such was the effect of the result­s that SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon admitted yesterday that her plans for a second independ­ence referendum might have to be shelved.

Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives all profited from the electorate’s decision to punish the SNP for its determin­ation to pursue another vote on Scotland’s future.

“Indyref2 is dead — that’s what’s happened tonight,” said Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader.

The Tories took the scalps of Mr Salmond in Gordon and Mr Robertson in Moray and came within 21 votes of unseating the longstanding SNP MP Pete Wishart in Perth and North Perthshire.

By 4.30am yesterday (1.30pm AEST), the SNP was still on course to emerge as Scotland’s biggest party, with more than 30 of the country’s 59 seats. The Nationalists had won 56 of Scotland’s seats two years ago after Scotland voted by 55 per cent against independence in a 2014 referendum.

GRAPHIC — The state of the nation

As the scale of the losses became­ clear, a rattled Ms Sturgeon conceded that she had some thinking to do about her plans for another independence vote.

Asked about the prospects for a new referendum, the First Minister said: “I am not going to take any rash decisions. Clearly I have to reflec­t on the result of the election and I will take time to do that.

“But it would be, I think, the wrong thing for me to do that at this hour, to take decisions before I have properly had the opportunity to properly think about it, but properly think about it I will certainly do.”

Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale said her new MPs will be firm opponents of a second independence referendum. “The SNP vote is crumbling in their heartlands ... it’s a very bad night for the SNP,” she said.

All across the country, the SNP lost votes — mostly to the Conservati­ves — reducing the SNP majorities almost everywhere and wiping them out completel­y in many areas.

The SNP is expected to remain Britain’s third-largest party, giving Ms Sturgeon the chance to seek a “progressive alliance” with Labour to lock Theresa May’s Conservative Party out of government.

Asked if there was a role for the SNP in a future government, she said: “There may well be, but it is perhaps too early to say that. But we will want to play a role ... in trying to, if we can, secure a progressive government at Westminster.”

In some areas the 17 percentage point increase in the Tory vote across Scotland was enough to elect a Conservative, and in others the collapse of the SNP vote let Labour­ in to take the seat.

SNP campaign manager Derek Mackay was quick to point out how difficult it would have been for the SNP to match its extraordinary victory in 2015.

He also claimed that the SNP had been the victim of tactical voting between unionist supporters — a tacit acknowledgment of the anger that has been generated by the SNP’s push for a second independence referendum. “To repeat that success of 2015 was always going to be difficult,” Mr Mackay said, adding: “There has been an onslaught from all the other parties against the SNP. There has been evidence of tactical voting.”

The Times, AFP