SNP and Greens would need 2m votes to spark IndyRef2, says Malcolm Offord
The Reform UK Scottish leader said the independence supporting parties would need to overtake the number of people who voted No in 2014 to hold another vote.
The SNP and Greens would need two million votes to hold a second independence referendum, Malcolm Offord has said.
The Reform UK Scottish leader said the independence supporting parties would need to overtake the number of people who voted No in 2014 to hold another vote.
It makes him the first unionist leader in Scotland to set out a threshold for a second Scottish independence referendum.
Some two million people voted against Scottish independence 12 years ago - with 1.6m voting to leave the UK.
The SNP and Greens took less than a million votes between them in May’s Holyrood election.
He told BBC Scotland’s Mornings programme on Friday: “I think there needs to be evidence that the Scottish people want to leave.
“Let’s think about the numbers for a minute. The population is 5.5m people. The electorate is 4.3m.
“When we did this in 2014, two million voted to stay in the UK, 1.6m voted to leave.
“If you track that 1.6m, which was effectively SNP plus Green votes, if you look at that block of voters, in the 2021 Holyrood election that was 1.3m and at the most recent 2026 election, that’s down to below a million.
“So if you’re less than a million people out of a 4.3m electorate, that is a mandate perhaps to run the country, but not a mandate to break up the UK.”
When asked what the threshold would be, he said: “Common sense would say, the most obvious thing is, it needs to be more than two million.
“Two million voted to stay, then there has to be more than two million people who want to leave. That sets the bar. That sets a bar from 2014.
“If you’re going to say it needs to be at least two million people, well right now there’s one million people who are voting for the separatist parties.
“So that’s a long way off. There’s therefore no appetite to do this.
“I want to be clear about this: the UK is a consensual union. It is a union of consensus.”
The threshold would almost be impossible to reach because the turnout in the 2014 independence referendum was 85 per cent - much higher than any Westminster or Holyrood election.
There were just 2.3m constituency and list votes in May’s Scottish Parliament election.
On the constituency, the SNP and Greens took 930,000 between them. On the list they won 945,000.
This was a signification drop from the 2021 election, where the SNP took 1.3m votes.
In the 2015 general election, the SNP and Greens took slightly under 1.5m votes - with the latter making up just 40,000.
This is the most votes independence supporting parties have ever won at a parliamentary election.
It is the only time that independence supporting parties have won more than 50 per cent of the vote at any election.
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