Edinburgh - Scotland's new pro-independence MPs and their leader Nicola Sturgeon on Saturday celebrated their seismic election gains against the backdrop of a landmark railway bridge.
A smiling Sturgeon hugged and kissed Scottish National Party (SNP) lawmakers who will take their places in the British parliament in Westminster after their dramatic advance in a general election which returned Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to power.
"The people of Scotland on Thursday voted for an SNP manifesto, which had ending austerity as its number one priority," Sturgeon said at the iconic Forth Rail Bridge outside Edinburgh.
"That is the priority that these men and women will now take to the very heart of the Westminster agenda," said Sturgeon, who heads up Scotland's devolved government but is not herself one of the new MPs.
"No longer will Scotland be sidelined or ignored in Westminster," said Sturgeon, speaking a day after Cameron promised to grant even more autonomy to Scotland, including new tax-raising powers.
Sturgeon's left-wing secessionist SNP increased its tally from six to 56 out of the 59 parliament seats for Scotland -- the only opposition success against a solid victory by Cameron's centre-right Conservatives.
"Look out London," read a front-page headline in The National, a new pro-independence newspaper. The Scotsman daily ran a picture of Cameron and Sturgeon with the headline: "Leaders of a divided kingdom".
The face of the SNP's gains was 20-year-old Mhairi Black, a Glasgow University politics student, who toppled a veteran Labour Party figure to become Britain's youngest lawmaker in nearly 350 years.
"Campaigning and studying went hand in hand," said Black, who is still completing her final year studies.
"It's just about seeing a fairer Scotland. What this is about doing is about going down and making sure that we're representing people," she said.
AFP
