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Gordon Brown launching fresh campaign to keep Scotland in UK following SNP’s latest election victory
Former prime minister Gordon Brown speaks at a Scottish Labour drive-in rally in Glasgow

GORDON BROWN is launching a fresh campaign to keep Scotland in the UK following the SNP’s latest election victory. 

The former Labour prime minister said his think tank Our Scottish Future would become a “campaigning movement” to make the “positive, progressive and patriotic case for Scotland in Britain.”

Although Nicola Sturgeon’s party failing to win an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament, the record eight Scottish Greens elected means that most MSPs — 72 out of 129 — favour a second referendum.

Mr Brown said that his group would “argue for a reformed UK with a more inclusive centre, a permanent decision-making forum that brings the leaders of the nations and regions together and for UK resources to back local policies for economic prosperity.”

Writing in the Scotsman, he called on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to “now institute a constitutional review, as [Labour leader] Keir Starmer has already done, into the whole future of the United Kingdom, specifically asking it to investigate alternatives to nationalism and the status quo.

“And he should immediately call together leaders from the regions and nations: not as a one-off but in a task force to tackle our multiple crises. As he must now realise, he has to change if the United Kingdom is to stay together.”

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has told Mr Johnson that the Holyrood election result means that the “question of a referendum is now a matter of when, not if.”

And another veteran Scottish Labour politician has warned that a second popular vote on independence was on the way.

Former first minister Henry McLeish wrote in the Scotsman: “There will be another referendum, three to five years ahead after we’ve recovered from the Covid crisis.”

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