Tories tell Sturgeon she would face bigger loss on second Scotland vote

THE Conservatives warned Nicola Sturgeon last night that if she went through with her threat for a second independence referendum she would lose by an even larger margin.

Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, told The Daily Telegraph there was “every chance” that the pro-Union side would win by more than the 10-point margin secured in the 2014 referendum.

In comments that will be seen as a direct challenge to Ms Sturgeon to think again about demanding another vote, Ms Davidson said the arguments for separation were weaker now and the people of Scotland “are just as switched on”.

She confirmed that Theresa May was ready with her response if Ms Sturgeon ignores her warning and uses this month’s SNP spring conference to demand the power to stage another vote.

Although she refused to disclose the Prime Minister’s answer, she hinted that another referendum should be delayed until after the Brexit deal was agreed by arguing that “people should know what they are voting for”.

Her confident prediction of victory came ahead of Mrs

May’s speech to the Scottish Tory conference in Glasgow tomorrow, in which she will accuse the SNP of having “tunnel vision” on independence and will make clear that defending the Union is a “personal priority.”

The Prime Minister will make an outspoken attack on the SNP’s record after a decade of governing Scotland, saying that the party’s “neglect and mismanagement of Scottish education has been a scandal” and that Scottish living standards are too important to be treated as a “game”.

But Ms Sturgeon complained that she had been met by a “brick wall of Tory intransigence” on her highly complicated blueprint for Scotland to stay in the EU single market when the UK leaves.

Highlighting the “decisive” Remain vote north of the Border, she warned Mrs May that “her government has no mandate in Scotland and no democratic basis to take us out of Europe and the single market against our will”.

With no sign of agreement and the triggering of Article 50 only weeks away, the First Minister is expected to make a major announcement on a second referendum at the SNP conference. Bookmakers have made the separatists favourite to win.

Ms Davidson said she did not think a rerun was “inevitable”, arguing that public opinion on independence had not changed since 2014 when 55 per cent of voters rejected separation, and that Ms Sturgeon had no mandate.

But she said if it did happen, she was confident of victory. “I think the arguments are weaker and I think the people of Scotland are just as switched on as they were three years ago, so I think there’s every chance that we would win by a wider margin.”