General election deals blow to Scottish plans for independence
Scottish secessionist party SNP lost 21 of its 56 seats to parties that want to keep the United Kingdom intact.
Sturgeon said she was appealing for MPs from all parties to work together to keep Britain in the European single market.
Major losses for the Scottish National Party in Britain's general election could force First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to rethink her plans for independence and her strategy on Brexit, observers said Friday.
Last year's vote for Britain to leave the European Union had fuelled separatists' ambitions to take Scotland out of the 300-year-old British union but the latest poll could serve to dash them again.
"Indyref2 is dead, that's what we have seen tonight," Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said, using the separatist slogan.
Davidson led her party to its best result in Scotland for three decades, in contrast to Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May's dismal showing elsewhere in the UK..
TRT World's Francis Collings has more from Edinburgh.
Rethinking strategy
The separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) nevertheless remains Scotland's biggest party despite some punishing losses, including former first minister Alex Salmond as well as the party's current deputy leader Angus Robertson.
Asked what the implications of the result would be for her hopes for independence, Sturgeon told the BBC: "I'm going to take time to reflect on this.
"I'm not going to rush to hasty judgements or decisions but clearly there is thinking for me to do about the SNP result," he said.
She admitted that the prospect of independence had left Scotland "feeling uncertain."
Scotland voted by 55 percent against independence in a 2014 referendum, but the defeated nationalists voted en masse for the SNP in 2015 handing them 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland.
Copyright © 2024 TRT World.