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Breaking now.

PM Boris Johnson has rejected SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon’s request for a second Scottish independence referendum, claiming it “would continue the political stagnation that Scotland has seen for the last decade."

Sturgeon - the first minister of Scotland - is on record as saying that she wants to hold a second referendum later this year, believing that she has a mandate following the 2019 general election that saw her party win 48 of the 59 seats in Scotland.

However, in a letter to Sturgeon, published on social media on Tuesday, Johnson contended that she and her predecessor promised that the 2014 independence referendum would be a “once in a generation vote.”