Boris Johnson calls union crisis talks – follow election results live

Carol Monaghan, SNP MP for Glasgow North West, has said she would like to see plans for a second Scottish independence referendum to be “drawn up by the end of the year”.

Speaking on Times Radio, she said: “I think we need to be drawing that up pretty quickly.“

“Unfortunately, initially we need to approach Westminster in order to have that referendum first of all anyway, so we will wait and see,” she said.

“Boris Johnson has been quite clear that he’s not going to grant that, so then we need to look at do we need to go to the courts in order to seek some kind of permission to go ahead with the referendum,” she said.

“What we don’t want is a wildcat referendum, we want this to be legal and we want it to be a gold standard referendum,” she said.

“I would like to see this being drawn up by the end of the year and I would like to see a referendum taking place sometime in 2022, that’s my personal position but that’s the timescale I’d be looking for,” Ms Monaghan said.

The UK’s focus should be on recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, rather than on whether or not Scotland will hold a second independence referendum, Michael Gove has said.

Speaking on Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Mr Gove said the UK’s focus “has to be recovery from the pandemic”.

Noting that “Nicola Sturgeon herself made clear during the campaign that her first priority…would be making sure we can come out of this pandemic and recover,” he refused to state whether the Johnson government would fight a second referendum.

Asserting that he was “not even going there at the moment,” Mr Gove maintained that his focus was on the pandemic recovery.

“To go down this route, to start speculating… it’s just a massive distraction,” he said.

Mr Gove rebuffed repeated questions from Ms Ridge on whether the Johnson government would seek to block a second referendum.

His comments come after Prime Minister Boris Johnson invited Ms Sturgeon for crisis talks after the SNP leader warned that a second independence referendum was the “will” of the people.

Sturgeon fell one seat short of securing an overall majority in the Scottish parliament elections. However, Holyrood was still left with a pro-independence majority.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will ask Prime Minister Boris Johnson to ‘simply…respect democracy” and allow a second independence referendum to move forward, newly-elected SNP MSP Neil Gray has said.

“There has never been as great a pro-independence majority in the Scottish Parliament and he needs to respect that outcome,” Mr Gray said, speaking with BBC Breakfast on Sunday.

“Clearly the health impact of the pandemic needs to be dealt with first,” he said.

However, then, he said Scotland will need to “take a decision as a nation” on “who gets to decide about the economic priorities about our recovery from the pandemic”.

“Do we want the powerful decisions of that being made by Boris Johnson for us in Scotland? Or do we want to be able to take those decisions ourselves and reject the austerity-driven, Brexit-driven isolationist UK Government?” he said.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been left “humbled” by his narrow re-election victory over Conservative contender Shaun Bailey.

Mr Khan faced a far tighter race than had been expected.

In his victory speech, he vowed to work to build a “better and brighter future” in the capital in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s in this spirit that I promise to lead London over the next three years, building bridges between the different communities in our city, building bridges across cultural, social and class divides,” he said.

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner has been sacked from her role as chairperson and national campaign coordinator following the party’s disastrous election results.

It comes after the Opposition lost the Hartlepool by-election, with the North East town going for a Tory MP for the first time in 60 years.

Meanwhile, Labour saw a net loss of six councils and more than 200 seats in local elections, delivering a stunning blow to the party.

The decision to fire Ms Rayner has not been without controversy as Labour Leader Keir Starmer faces accusations of “scapegoating” the campaign coordinator.

Andrew Woodcock and Ashley Cowburn have the story:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has invited Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon for crisis talks after the SNP leader warned that a second independence referendum was the “will” of the people.

Sturgeon fell one seat short of securing an overall majority in the Scottish parliament elections, coming away with 64 seats.

Holyrood was still left with a pro-independence majority, however, meaning a fresh push for a second referendum can be expected.

In her victory speech, Ms Sturgeon said a second vote was the “will of the country”.

She also put Mr Johnson on notice, warning that any Westminister politician who tries to stand in the way of a second vote would be “picking a fight with the democratic wishes of the Scottish people”.

In a letter to the SNP leader, Mr Johnson congratulated her on her victory, but said UK residents are “best served when we work together”.

He asked the first minister to attend a “summit meeting to discuss our shared challenges and how we can work together in the coming months and years to overcome them”.

“We will all have our own perspectives and ideas – and we will not always agree – but I am confident that by learning from each other we will be able to build back better, in the interests of the people we serve,” he said.