Tories ‘as big a threat to the Union as SNP’

The Brexit “chaos” caused by the Tories means Theresa May’s party is now as big a threat to the continuation of the United Kingdom as the SNP, Labour’s Ian Murray has said.

The Scottish Labour MP warned a hard Brexit, which would see the UK leave both the single market and the customs union, would “destabilise” the union between Scotland and England, as well as “decimate” jobs and “devastate” the economy.

Such a move “plays directly into the hands of the SNP who will use it to pursue a divisive second independence referendum”, Mr Murray claimed.

He spoke out ahead of a Commons debate on the topic of strengthening the Union.

Mrs May has pledged her party will defend what she has described as “our precious Union of nations and people”.

But Mr Murray, who wants Labour to change its Brexit policy to support continued single market membership, said divisions over the Chequers deal highlighted the “chaos engulfing the prime minister”.

Mr Murray, the MP for Edinburgh South, said: “This shambolic Tory government is hurtling towards a hard Brexit that will decimate jobs, devastate our economy and destabilise the United Kingdom.

“As a result of the reckless referendum on EU membership, and the chaos engulfing the prime minister, the Tories are now as big a threat to the Union as the SNP.

“Theresa May can no longer be trusted with what she once called the ‘precious Union’, and Ruth Davidson’s Scottish Tory MPs are providing nothing but lobby fodder for the prime minister’s hard Brexit. This plays directly into the hands of the SNP who will use it to pursue a divisive second independence referendum with the aim of compounding Brexit by breaking up Britain, hurting the poorest the hardest.

“Scotland deserves better than two nationalist governments which put ideology ahead of the public interest.”