“What we need to do is show the people of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales what we are delivering for them and making sure that all of our government policies apply right across the United Kingdom.” Advertisement Truss said that included her success in lifting whisky tariffs with the US, which made her immensely popular with Scotch whisky distillers. “Nicola Sturgeon can carry on talking about an independence referendum. We had the referendum in 2014. It was agreed it was once in a generation. I didn’t realise a generation happened within 10 years. That doesn’t make any sense.” Asked if that was an “absolute no” to a second independence referendum, she repeated Margaret Thatcher’s often quoted response: “No, no, no.” Some decided to respond to Truss in kind. James Withers, the chief executive of the trade body Scotland Food and Drink and an outspoken critic of the UK government’s mishandling of post-Brexit trade arrangements with the EU and Northern Ireland, posted a riposte on Twitter, with the words “attention seekers should be ignored”: At the latest count, eight Tory MSPs and two Scottish Tory MPs have endorsed Sunak’s candidacy. The two candidates will face each other for a Scotland-focused hustings in Perth in mid-August, two weeks before voting closes for the leadership. This article was amended on 2 August 2022. An earlier version said Liz Truss referred to being “born in Paisley”. In fact she referred to attending primary school there; she was born in Oxford.