Restore Scotland: New pro-Brexit Scottish independence party launches Holyrood campaign with attack on SNP record

A new pro-independence party has launched its campaign for the Scottish Parliamentary elections, just 50 days before voters head to the polls.

Restore Scotland, which advocates for Scottish independence outside of the European Union was founded in April last year, on the 700th anniversary of the Declration of Arbroath.

The party, which has just a handful of followers on social media, is the latest in a flurry of small pro-indepdence parties - critical of the SNP - to announce they will contest the May ballot.

Restore Scotland is set to announce a list of candidates standing across the country after its campaign launches this afternoon.

Ahead of the event, interim leader David McHutchon, who is himself standing for the party in the Banffshire and Buchan Coast constituency, told The National that “a new space has opened up” for a political party that “believes in true independence.”

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19165228.holyrood-election-new-pro-independence-party-restore-scotland-launched/

“There is currently no voice in Scotland for those who wish to come out of Westminster and stay out of the European Union,” he explained, “the parties at Holyrood offer an illusion of choice.

“While we affirm the right of our people to individual autonomy and self-government, we also represent the mainstream on many domestic issues which is broadly in line with the common-sense instincts of ordinary Scots.

A new pro-independence party has launched its campaign for the Scottish Parliamentary elections, just 50 days before voters head to the polls. (Photo by David Cheskin/Getty Images)

The party’s interim deputy leader, Donald Morrison, left the SNP after more than half a century as a member.

The 73-year-old said: “I have been a passionate advocate of Scottish independence for over half a century.

“I joined the SNP in 1966 and have been a lifelong supporter but became increasingly exasperated by the party’s insistence on re-joining the European Union.

“What is the point of gaining independence from Westminster only to surrender it to Brussels?” Mr Morrison asked.

“It is illogical and when canvassing prior to Covid-19 on doorsteps in Aberdeenshire it was a question I was consistently asked and completely unable to answer.

“Over one million Scots voted to leave the EU, many of whom are supporters of Scottish independence, but the SNP has shut them up and shut them out,” he said, “Now they have a choice.”

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