UK PM hope Liz Truss poll lead falls

• Foreign secretary called Nicola Sturgeon a “attention seeker” for advocating independence.
• SNP calls her remarks “obnoxious” and compared them to the party’s 2.4 million votes last year.

Liz Truss leadership candidacy faced its first significant jeopardy Tuesday as she was pushed into a policy U-turn and came under pressure in Scotland amid a diminishing poll advantage.

The foreign secretary was accused of insulting the government in Edinburgh after she called First Minister Nicola Sturgeon an “attention seeker” for advocating for Scottish independence.

The SNP, which wants a second independence referendum, denounced the remarks made at Tory hustings in southwest England late Monday.

John Swinney, Sturgeon’s deputy as the first minister of Scotland, termed the remarks “obnoxious” and compared the 200,000 Tory members to the SNP’s 2.4 million votes last year.

“Nicola Sturgeon has far more democratic legitimacy than Liz Truss is going to have if she becomes prime minister,” he told a UK news agency.

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“And I think Liz Truss has absolutely no right or foundation to make these remarks,” Swinney said, saying her “silly, intemperate intervention” had made the case itself for Scotland to go its own way.

Truss’s challenger in the campaign to succeed Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, has similarly ruled out another referendum after Scots voted narrowly to stay in the UK in 2014.

Sunak dubbed it “the wrong priority at the worst possible moment”.

The SNP says Brexit has changed the constitutional discussion and seeks a second plebiscite in 2023.

The Supreme Court in London will hold hearings on October 11–12 to determine if that’s permissible without consent from Truss or Sunak.

“Keeping the UK together means confronting nationalism and beating it at the ballot box. Only I have a plan to do this,” Sunak said after getting 10 Scottish Conservatives’ backing.

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