Tom Gordon

THE LABOUR MEP who sparked one of the fiercest rows of the referendum has urged Nicola Sturgeon to be more honest than Alex Salmond in the event of a second ballot.

Catherine Stihler said the First Minister should remember "honesty is always the best policy".

In 2012, Stihler's freedom of information (FoI) request exposed the SNP Government 's lack of legal advice on an independent Scotland's EU membership.

Ministers had claimed Scotland would automatically remain inside as a "successor state", and inherit UK opt-outs from the Euro and the passport-free Schengen area.

However others claimed Scotland would need to apply for membership from scratch.

Interviewed by Andrew Neil on whether he had sought advice from government law officers, Salmond famously replied: "We have, yes, in terms of the debate."

But after the government went to court to fight an FoI disclosure ruling, Sturgeon admitted there was no specific legal advice after all.

Labour called Salmond "a bare-faced liar", and the SNP later conceded EU membership would have to be negotiated through a rewriting of EU treaties.

Stihler said the episode had been "outrageous" and against the tradition of "Scottish democracy".

She said: "I felt, when I heard people talk about automatic membership of the EU, that they were fundamentally misleading individuals, and we needed to have fact rather than fiction.

"It's a reflection that some people will do and say anything to gain power and push an issue, rather than being clear about the reality and the truthfulness of the subject.

"The idea that you would ever have automatic membership of an institution such as the European Union was just pie in the sky. There's negotiation, and you have to be honest about that. You will not get one hundred per cent of your demands No one, not even the First Minister, has a crystal ball to predict the results."

She said she hoped there would not be another referendum, as the last was supposed to have been a once in a generation event.

"We need to remember the vote on the 18th of September was a clear, clear vote to say No to independence and I hope that the First Minister will respect that and not play party politics over something that was a democratic decision of the Scottish people."