‘Tories a threat to the future of United Kingdom’

The Scottish Labour MP Ian Murray has warned a hard Brexit would spark an existential crisis for the union and could see Scotland leaving the UK.

He believes a worst-case scenario would see the UK leave both the single market and the customs union which would ‘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’, Murray said.

He spoke out ahead of a House of Commons debate brought forward by the government on strengthening the union.

Prime minister Theresa May has previously pledged her party would defend what she described as ‘our precious union of nations and people’.

But Murray, who is fighting to force 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’.

Murray 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.’