Scottish independence: Alex Salmond's Alba party sets out plan to hold 2024 vote on extending powers for independence

Ash Regan MSP says she will bring forward a bill to Holyrood which she hopes will lead to a second independence referendum

Alex Salmond’s Alba Party has launched a new “back up” referendum plan which they hope will achieve Scottish independence.

The former first minister and the party’s new MSP Ash Regan are urging the Scottish Government and First Minister Humza Yousaf to back their referendum bill, which they say will move the debate on from the “dead end” its currently stuck in.

This comes only weeks after Ms Regan defected to Alba from the SNP.

Alba Party Holyrood leader Ash Regan MSP (right), party leader Alex Salmond (lelft) and Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (centre), party chair, hold a press conference in Edinburgh. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

The pair plan to bring forward a bill to hold a referendum, which would ask people if they think Holyrood’s powers should be extended to allow it to legislate and negotiate independence.

They also want to hold this vote on 19 September 2024, exactly 10 years on from the failed 2014 independence referendum.

Mr Salmond said: “The national movement has come to a dead end at the Supreme Court last year - people haven’t proposed a way forward until now.

“The Scottish Government is not going to do anything different from what they have been doing over the last nine years, which is to ask Westminster for a referendum.

Alba Party MSP Ash Regan arrives for Scotland’s Housing Emergency debate in the Scottish Parliament this month. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

“I think it’s pretty clear that’s not going to happen.”

Ms Regan also made a direct appeal to Humza Yousaf to back her bill.

She said: “That was one of the frustrations that I was having when I was part of the SNP, there just wasn’t any progress.

“I believe this breaks the stalemate and moves us forward from that logjam we’ve been in constitutionally.

“I’d like to take the opportunity to speak directly to the Scottish Government and to Humza Yousaf - the bill I’m proposing today has the capacity to bring the whole independence movement together and break the constitutional logjam.

“If you support this bill, we can guarantee that it is delivered.

“Instead of putting the immediate future of independence into the hands of Westminster, we can put it back into the hands of Scotland where it belongs.”

This means Ms Regan has less than a year to get her member’s bill through parliament, but Mr Salmond insists this is possible “if the government decides to support it”.

The UK Government has repeatedly refused to grant a second independence referendum, and only last year the Scottish Government lost a Supreme Court case which ruled Holyrood could not legislate for a vote without Westminster’s consent.

She would need to get at least 18 other MSPs to support her bill for it to progress, something Ms Regan has conceded would be challenging, meaning she will need to lean on the support of her former SNP colleagues or their government partners the Greens - unlikely, given the Greens have already drawn a clear line between themselves and Ms Regan.

However Ms Regan says she believes there may be other democrats in the parliament who “perhaps don’t favour independence, but they still think that it’s democratically right for Scotland to have that choice over their own future.”

Alba will be drafting this bill itself, as the parliament’s non-government bills unit, which supports MSPs bringing forward member’s bills, is “at capacity”.

This is the back-up plan had former prime minister David Cameron refused to grant an independence referendum back in 2014.

This was the back-up plan.

Ash Regan said she was not able to bring forward a bill like this while she was still a member of the SNP.

She said: “Now that I’ve moved to Alba I can pursue things like this that I am passionate about.

“I’m glad to be sitting here today presenting this to you.

“It was a frustration when I was in the SNP that there was not any progress, and I believe this breaks the stalemate and the logjam, and moves us forward and allows us to start talking about this again.”

Alex Salmond said: “Ten years ago very few people knew about this initiative because David Cameron agreed to the section 30 order.

“Obviously I knew about it, senior members of the government knew about it, David Cameron knew about it, and senior members of his government knew about it.

“But it was never publicised because there was an agreement for a section 30 order.

“This was the fall back position, which I think was very influential in agreeing the section 30 order.

“But it was never publicised and therefore in that sense it is new in this environment and it is a means of breaking the logjam.”