John Sweeney, the deputy first minister and Sturgeon’s closest political ally, said Scottish voters would be “absolutely horrified” by Truss’ “disgusting” remarks, made during the Conservative leadership clash in Exeter in Monday night. “Unionists suggest Scotland should be at the heart of the UK. How can Scotland be expected to be at the heart of the UK when our country’s democratically elected leader is, in the view of the person most likely to be the next Prime Minister of the UK, someone to be ignored is completely and utterly unacceptable.” , he told BBC Scotland. “So I think that Liz Truss with a stupid over-the-top intervention has fundamentally undermined the argument that she is trying to make that Scotland can be treated fairly and well at the heart of the UK.” Truss, the clear favorite ahead of Rishi Sunak to win the final round of the Tory leadership election, won cheers and loud applause from party campaigners when she said the best she had to do with Sturgeon’s demands for independence referendum was to ignore it. “She’s an attention seeker, she is,” Truss said. Endorsed on Monday by nine key Tory backbenchers, Truss referred to the fact that she was born in Paisley, south-west of Glasgow, before her parents moved to Leeds. “I feel like I’m a child of the union, that I really think we’re a family and we’re better together,” he told the hustings. “What we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we have to offer them and make sure that all our government policies are implemented across the UK.” Truss said this included her success in getting whiskey tariffs lifted with the US, which made her extremely popular with Scotch whiskey stills. “Nicola Sturgeon can keep talking about an independence referendum. We had the referendum in 2014. It was agreed that it was once in a generation. I didn’t realize a generation happened in 10 years. That doesn’t make any sense.” Asked if this was an “absolute no” to a second independence referendum, she repeated Margaret Thatcher’s oft-quoted response: “No, no, no.” Some decided to respond to Truss in kind. James Withers, the chief executive of trade body Scotland Food and Drink and an outspoken critic of the UK government’s mishandling of post-Brexit trade deals with the EU and Northern Ireland, posted a response on Twitter, saying “seekers attention must be ignored’; At last count, eight Tory MPs and two Scottish Tory MPs have backed Sunak’s candidacy. The two candidates will face off for a Scotland-focused meeting in Perth in mid-August, two weeks before the leadership vote closes.
