TRAPPED: Nobody Asks Scotland · The chapters

Chapter 14: Not The Time

"Now is not the time."

Theresa May, Prime Minister, on a second independence referendum, 16 March 2017.

Six Prime Ministers in turn have said not now, three of them from Number 10 without any general election behind them; the court has said not alone; and nobody has ever said when.

The receipts

The source list for this chapter, as the publisher maintains it. Archive links are given wherever a cited page could move or die.

• Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland: nature, producer (Scottish Government, Office of the Chief Economic Adviser, Chief Statistician responsible) and scope: gov.scot, "About Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland".
• GERS accreditation: National Statistics designation 2005; Office for Statistics Regulation renaming to "Accredited Official Statistics" (announced September 2023, badge in use from 7 June 2024): OSR, "Designation refresh"; gov.scot GERS FAQ.
• Publication history: first edition 1992 (Scottish Office); annual since 1995; no edition 2007; two editions 2016 (no cause asserted, see Verification notes); publication dates GERS 2023-24 (14 August 2024), 2024-25 (13 August 2025), 2025-26 (12 August 2026): gov.scot publication pages; Fraser of Allander Institute pre-publication note, August 2026.
• GERS 2025-26 headline figures (revenue £98.3bn; expenditure £123.6bn; net fiscal balance -10.9% of GDP against -4.2% UK; cash deficit £25.3bn): Fraser of Allander Institute and gov.scot coverage, pending direct read of the publication page (see Verification notes).
• "GERSmas" and the annual script, documented from both sides of the constitutional argument: Wee Ginger Dug, "GERSmas Day 2026", 11 August 2026; The Spectator, "GERS Day isn't great for the Union"; Tax Research UK, 13 August 2026; Believe in Scotland, "i-GERS".
• The four withholdings (dates only; full argument, quotations and case references in Chapter 13 and): Dunlop Review (cover-dated November 2019, published 24 March 2021); ISC Russia report (to the Prime Minister 17 October 2019, dissolution 6 November 2019, election 12 December 2019, published 21 July 2020); Cabinet Office Union polling (FOI request 3 June 2019, refusal 1 July 2019 under s.35(1)(a) FOIA, First-tier Tribunal disclosure order 10 June 2021, Upper Tribunal set-aside 5 March 2024, unreleased); Viginum/BlackCore correspondence (Cabinet Office refusal under s.24 FOIA, August 2026).
• Pre-election period, 26 March to 7 May 2026, and quoted principles: gov.scot, "Scottish Parliament Election 7 May 2026: guidance for the Scottish Government, its agencies and National Devolved Public Bodies".
• Union flag funding-plaque policy, 13 August 2020 (Alister Jack).2 and Chapter 14 sources.
• Daily Union-flag-flying policy, announced 24 March 2021 (DCMS/MHCLG, UK-wide); the same-day Dunlop publication pairing assembled in this chapter (see Verification notes).
• Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (HarperCollins, 1993), p624, quoted verbatim ("undoubted right to national self-determination... no English party or politician would stand in their way"): page reference per Iain Halliday, "Scotland's Contested Constitution", Strathclyde Student Law Review, footnote 18 (Wayback-archived); wording corroborated word for word across independent secondary discussions including The Ferret's fact-check (FIRM).
• John Major, Foreword (signed, March 1993) to Scotland in the Union: A Partnership for Good, Cm 2225, HMSO, 1993, p5, quoted verbatim ("As I have said before, no nation could be held irrevocably in a Union against its will"): primary scanned PDF pulled and read directly, assets.publishing.service.gov.uk; Wayback save confirmed (FIRM).
• Edinburgh Agreement, 15 October 2012, quoted from the agreement text: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk (full PDF).
• The Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedule 5) Order 2013, SI 2013/242, made 12 February 2013: legislation.gov.uk.
• 2014 referendum result (No 55.3%, Yes 44.7%, turnout 84.6%): Electoral Commission report, December 2014.
• Theresa May, 16 March 2017, quoted verbatim: BBC News, "Theresa May: 'Now is not the time' for Scotland independence vote"; AFP wire via Gulf News (two contemporaneous sources converging word for word; transcript pull outstanding).
• Boris Johnson, Conservative leadership hustings, Perth, 4 July 2019, quoted verbatim ("I see absolutely no case for having a second referendum in Scotland. I think it's absurd."): BBC News, "Tory leadership candidates face Scottish members", 4 July 2019, Wayback-archived (FIRM).
• Boris Johnson, letter to Nicola Sturgeon, 14 January 2020, quoted verbatim: gov.uk publication; full text reproduced in The Scotsman.
• Liz Truss, Perth hustings, 16 August 2022, quoted verbatim: The Scotsman; STV News.
• Scottish Parliament vote requesting a Section 30 order, 28 March 2017, 69 to 59: contextual date per.1 (to be confirmed against the Official Report, see Verification notes).
• Rishi Sunak, PMQs, 23 November 2022, quoted verbatim: Hansard (primary citation; debate "Scottish Referendum Legislation: Supreme Court Decision"); wording corroborated by Scottish Daily Express and The Scotsman PMQs coverage. Sunak, Scottish Conservative conference, Glasgow, 29 April 2023 ("completely firm"), quoted verbatim: STV News.
• Reference by the Lord Advocate of devolution issues under paragraph 34 of Schedule 6 to the Scotland Act 1998 [2022] UKSC 31, judgment 23 November 2022, unanimous, Lord Reed: caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk; fuller quoted passages in and.
• Keir Starmer, 23 September 2020, Sky News broadcast interview, quoted verbatim ("These issues are questions for Scotland. I do stand by that."): LabourList, 23 September 2020, and Press and Journal, 23 September 2020, two independent contemporaneous outlets converging word for word, both Wayback-archived; same-day BBC News report ("Indyref2: Starmer refuses to rule out backing Scotland referendum", 23 September 2020) as corroborating context; the January 2020 leadership-contest remark, dated 28 January 2020 via ITV Border and stood by in the September interview, is described in the prose without verbatim quotation (see Verification notes) (FIRM).
• Keir Starmer, JP Mackintosh Memorial Lecture, 21 December 2020, quoted verbatim ("Given the damage and division this would cause, no responsible First Minister should contemplate it, and no responsible Prime Minister would grant it."): LabourList, 21 December 2020, reporting the lecture directly, Wayback-archived (FIRM).
• Douglas Alexander, Scottish Secretary, Commons statement, 10 June 2026, quoted verbatim: Hansard, "Scottish Independence".
• Andy Burnham, Sunday Mail interview by John Ferguson (Sunday Mail political editor), published 28 August 2022 on the Sunday Mail/Daily Record shared platform (Reach plc), quoted verbatim ("Looking from the outside, it's clear the constitutional question is not settled. In terms of a referendum, I'm not going to say, 'No, not ever,' I'm not going to use that language"): dailyrecord.co.uk, Wayback-archived; corroborated by Nicola Sturgeon's same-day tweet (28 August 2022, 10:22 UTC) linking the article and photographing the printed Sunday Mail page, Wayback-archived (FIRM).
• Andy Burnham: became Prime Minister 20 July 2026 (NPR, CNN, ABC News, gov.uk, converging); Mayor of Greater Manchester going into 2026; met First Minister John Swinney in Glasgow 23 July 2026; quoted words "I'm not focused on point scoring or discussing constitutional changes like referendums", from a statement shared by the UK Government, verbatim from the Al Jazeera text: Al Jazeera, 23 July 2026, items 1 and 2, Group 4.
• Andy Burnham, devolution, 23 July 2026, quoted verbatim ("For 40 years, power and resources have been sucked into the centre, and too many communities have felt forgotten"; "The days of Whitehall resisting devolution are over, for good"): gov.uk announcement, "No10 North open for business as the Government's new situation room for making Britain better", 23 July 2026 (primary); Wayback save confirmed submitted 22 August 2026, item 3.
• No 10 North sited in Manchester (Heron House): the gov.uk announcement above; GCHQ, "No10 North opens at GCHQ's Heron House", 24 July 2026 (primary), item 4.
• Devolution referendum, 11 September 1997: common record; the prose uses only the year and the fact of the vote.
• The Vow, Daily Record front page, 16 September 2014, signed by David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg; "extensive new powers" quoted from the signed text (present in both known textual variants).1; full treatment of the pledge and its vehicle in Chapter 12.
• Gordon Brown, quoted verbatim: Edinburgh International Book Festival, 15 August 2014 ("as close to a federal state as you can be in a country where one nation is 85 per cent of the population"): The Scotsman; Loanhead Miners Welfare and Social Club, Midlothian, 8 September 2014 ("a modern form of Scottish Home Rule within the United Kingdom"): New Statesman; BBC News.2.
• Smith Commission report, 27 November 2014 (DEP2014-1578); Scotland Act 2016 (c.11), Royal Assent 23 March 2016; income tax rates and thresholds (Smith para 76), welfare benefits (para 49), VAT receipts assignment (para 84).3 and §3.4.
• English attitudes: YouGov 2023 wave (pleased 14%, not bothered 36%, upset 42%, GB-wide) via What Scotland Thinks; YouGov, September 2024 tenth-anniversary article (46% upset, 32% unbothered, 14% pleased; "largely the same in England"); Savanta ComRes for Left Foot Forward, fieldwork 14-16 May 2021 (England 38% "have a right" vs 34%; South East 40% vs 38%), corroborated by The Scotsman; NatCen/BSA (25% of English respondents supporting Scottish independence in 2012 and 2022; England "more than fair share" trend, roughly a third to four in ten through most of 2007-2021); Future of England Survey 2017 (74% of English Leave voters: break-up of the UK a price worth paying for Brexit): Cardiff University / Centre on Constitutional Change.
• Full research dossiers From old chapter 27:
• The door and the key. Reference by the Lord Advocate of devolution issues under paragraph 34 of Schedule 6 to the Scotland Act 1998 [2022] UKSC 31, 23 November 2022, unanimous, Lord Reed (President), Lord Lloyd-Jones, Lord Sales, Lord Stephens, Lady Rose, https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/uksc/2022/31; quoted at paras 57 ("loose or consequential connection" test), 78, 81, 88 and 92, read directly against the judgment; press summary, https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2022_0098_press_summary_edebaa7091.pdf. SNP intervention as the source of the self-determination argument; Reference re Secession of Quebec [1998] 2 SCR 217 as quoted by the court; the UK's Kosovo submission as quoted by the court. Edinburgh Agreement, 15 October 2012; Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedule 5) Order 2013. No further reference, litigation or section 30 process since November 2022: negative finding, dossier §3.4.
• The Claim of Right debate: HC Deb 4 July 2018, vol 644, cc 407 to 456; Stephen Kerr (Con, Stirling) at c 432, Christine Jardine (LD, Edinburgh West) at c 410, Ian Blackford (SNP, Ross, Skye and Lochaber) at c 410, all quoted verbatim per, fetched from hansard.parliament.uk by the browser route, 12 September 2026.
• Andy Burnham, PMQs, HC Deb 9 September 2026, vol 790, c 1044, question 901285, answering Chris Law (SNP, Dundee Central), quoted verbatim; letter to the First Minister, 10 September 2026, as published in The National, quoted verbatim
• Who holds the door. Theresa May: New Statesman, 11 July 2016 (Leadsom's withdrawal; "on course to become Prime Minister without a contest"; members' ballot waived), Wayback capture outstanding (rate-limited 9 October 2026). Liz Truss: Institute for Government, Conservative Party leadership contest 2022 (57.4 per cent of voting members; result 5 September, Prime Minister 6 September 2022), archived https://web.archive.org/web/20261009080614/https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/conservative-party-leadership-contest-2022. Rishi Sunak: Institute for Government, Conservative Party leadership contests ("elected as the new leader unopposed, as he was the only candidate who met the threshold of 100 nominations"; Prime Minister 25 October 2022), archived https://web.archive.org/web/20261009080503/https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/conservative-party-leadership-contests. Andy Burnham: Makerfield by-election 18 June 2026 (24,937 votes), Labour leader unopposed 17 July, Prime Minister 20 July 2026 (NPR, 19 June and 17 July 2026). Northern Ireland Act 1998, Schedule 1. Section added 9 October 2026 at Eric's instruction.
• Publication review additions, 9 October 2026 (the advocate merge; each tag is the edit it sources): - (14-A04#1) Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street and Office of the Secretary of State for Scotland, 'PM statement on the anniversary of the Scotland referendum', gov.uk news story, 18 September 2015. Verbatim: 'Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and I signed the Edinburgh Agreement which pledged we would all respect the outcome of last year's momentous vote. We all agreed – as do the Scottish public – that the independence referendum should be a ‘once in a generation’ or a ‘once in a lifetime’ event. So now it is time to move on.' https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-statement-on-the-anniversary-of-the-scotland-referendum archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20261009093608/https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-statement-on-the-anniversary-of-the-scotland-referendum. Read via https://www.gov.uk/api/content/government/news/pm-statement-on-the-anniversary-of-the-scotland-referendum (public_updated_at 2015-09-18). Also line 103; the Edinburgh Agreement's text has zero matches for 'once in a generation' (same file, line 95).

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