Securing a No vote in September’s independence referendum is more important than the Conservatives winning next year’s UK general election, according to John Major.
The former Tory Prime Minister also claimed the SNP chose the date for September’s vote to be as close as possible to the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn to stoke up “anti-English sentiment”.
Mr Major was addressing a lunch for members of the Scottish Parliamentary Journalists’ Association when he made the remarks.
He said: “I don’t wish to disparage the importance of the 2015 election at all, it is one of the more important elections we have had in the past 30 years or so, but it is less important than maintaining the United Kingdom as an entity.”
He added: “We have fought wars together more often and more recently than we have fought as enemies against each other.
“We were at war centuries ago, which is, if I may be brutally frank, why I find it rather sad the Scottish National Party chose the anniversary of Bannockburn for the vote, presumably to maximise the opportunity for any anti-English sentiment that may exist.”
Although Mr Major said he thought “any bruises that may exist between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom will very soon disappear” after September’s vote, he condemned the “troll like language” that has emerged online.
“If Alex Salmond cannot control these people, and perhaps he can’t, then he can at least disown them and he should,” he said.
SNP MSP Stewart Maxwell said: “John Major is perfectly entitled to his view but his comments are woefully out of touch.
“He was wrong about a Scottish Parliament in the 1990s, and he is wrong about an independent Scotland now.
“He also, unwittingly, makes the case for independence himself by pointing out that the Tories rule Scotland with just one MP out of 59.
“But John Major is just about the last person the No campaign will have wanted to see entering the debate here, given his track record in ensuring a Tory wipe-out in Scotland in 1997.”