Former SNP deputy leader Jim Sillars has said he will not vote for Scottish independence if it means rejoining the EU after Brexit.
A pro-Leave campaigner in the run up to June’s referendum, Mr Sillars said he “could not vote Yes” to Scottish independence in such circumstances.
Speaking in a BBC Radio 4 documentary broadcast on Monday, the former Glasgow Govan MP warned that Nicola Sturgeon risked alienating SNP supporters, a third of whom voted to Leave, by framing a second referendum around EU membership.
He said: “I, for example, could not vote Yes if on the ballot paper it said, ‘We wish the Scottish state to be a member of the European Union’, and I’m not alone in that.
“One of the biggest miscalculations by Nicola Sturgeon is to believe that the 1.6 million Scots who voted Remain would automatically then vote to go back into the European Union.
“That means Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Tory party, and all the Tories who voted to Remain, would in fact vote to leave the United Kingdom and take a Scottish state into the European Union. I think that’s fantasy.”
Mr Sillars went on to describe what he described as the “grievance tactics” of key figures in the current SNP leadership.
He said: “The whole idea is to drive up the grievance, that we should be treated equal and we are not being treated equally, we’re being ignored, our legitimate concerns are no concern of Westminster.
“You build up this idea that we are being ill-done by inside the United Kingdom.”
He added: “From this point of view, [such tactics] should drive up the Scottish grievance that we are being ill-done to and therefore the best thing to do is get out of it altogether. It’s not a position I agree with.”
The First Minister is widely expected to announced further steps towards a second referendum on Scottish independence at the SNP party conference in Aberdeen next week.
In January, Ms Sturgeon said a second vote was now “more likely” after Theresa May confirmed the UK will leave the European single market.
“It seems the Westminster Tory Government now think they can do anything to Scotland and get away with it,” she said. “They must start to understand how wrong they are.”
“The UK Government cannot be allowed to take us out of the EU and the single market, regardless of the impact on our economy, jobs, living standards and our reputation as an open, tolerant country, without Scotland having the ability to choose between that and a different future.”
