4. I associate myself and my party with the First Minister’s remarks about New Zealand. The events in that country were truly sickening.

You would not think that we were in the middle of a national crisis if you just listened to the questions from the leaders of the Conservative and Labour parties, but the last thing this country needs is more division and chaos with independence to compound the division and chaos of Brexit. [

Interruption

.]

The Presiding Officer:

Order, please.

The first duty of a Prime Minister is to keep the country safe but, because of the cavalier choices of this Prime Minister, emergency measures under operation yellowhammer have been triggered and medicines, food supply chains and transport are all at risk. Does the First Minister agree that no serious Prime Minister should ever threaten such catastrophic consequences, no matter how much she wants her policy to be agreed?

Before I address Willie Rennie’s question, I say in response to the first part of what he said that the inconsistency in his position is this: he wants people across the United Kingdom to have the ability to escape Brexit through a second referendum—and I agree with him on that—but if that does not prove to be possible, he thinks that Scotland should just grin and bear it, and put up with the devastation of Brexit, instead of Scotland having the choice to escape Brexit and have an independent future. That is a deeply inconsistent position for him to take and I hope that he will reflect on it.

On operation yellowhammer, which is the emergency planning for a no-deal Brexit, it is beyond comprehension that any Prime Minister could knowingly allow the country to be eight days—about 200 hours—away from the possibility of crashing out of the European Union without a deal and to require that emergency planning work to be done. Yesterday, as I have done once a week for several weeks, I chaired a meeting of the Scottish Government’s resilience committee that was looking at medicine supplies, food supplies and transport links in the event of a no-deal Brexit. It is outrageous that we have to expend time, energy and resources on doing that. Before any more time passes and it is too late, the Prime Minister must change course, take no deal off the table completely, look to build a broader consensus rather than pandering to the hardliners in her own party and, if necessary, dump Brexit completely. That would be in the best interests of the country.

The First Minister is wrong. The inconsistency is to believe that breaking up an economic partnership of 40 years will be chaotic but that breaking up one of 300 years will be a piece of cake. [

Interruption

.]

The Presiding Officer:

Order, please.

The First Minister is the inconsistent one. [

Interruption

.]

The Presiding Officer:

Order, please.

People are scunnered by this agonising Brexit process. We are three years on, with 200 hours left. Is it not time for a commonsense approach under which the Prime Minister takes a no-deal Brexit off the table instead of using it as a threat against her own citizens; all party leaders sit down and talk instead of the leader of the Opposition walking out because he does not like Chuka Umunna; the Prime Minister reaches out to MPs in Parliament rather than insulting them from behind a podium in number 10; and we admit that Parliament is incapable of deciding, so we have a public vote to let the people decide? Is it not time for that commonsense approach?

The First Minister:

Yes, I agree with all that. I think that people across the UK should have the opportunity to vote again, given everything that they now know that was not known in 2016. That is why I will be calling for that public vote in London on Saturday, along with many others—no doubt, hundreds of thousands of others.

I agree with everything that the member said about the Prime Minister, and I share his despair about the leader of the Labour Party and his childish behaviour last night at a time when we need people to come together to find an alternative. Where I disagree with the member is on his view that, if all of what he has just called for fails, Scotland is powerless in the face of the disaster of Brexit. I oppose Brexit, as he does, but there was nothing inevitable about the chaos of Brexit. That is down to those who proposed it having no idea what it would look like in reality and doing no planning for it. It did not have to be that way.

I say to Willie Rennie that the inconsistency is in him standing up to rightly spell out what a disaster Brexit will be but then saying that, if all else fails, Scotland just has to put up with it. I do not think that Scotland has to put up with it and I do not think that Scotland should have to put up with it. If it comes to it, Scotland choosing independence is a much brighter future than remaining part of Brexit Britain.

The Presiding Officer:

We have some additional supplementaries.