Tom Gordon

Scottish Political Editor

AN SNP MEP has delivered the bluntest warning yet to his party to stop talking up a second referendum and focus on bread and butter issues at Holyrood instead.

Alyn Smith said voters would not thank the SNP for bringing forward a new vote, and complaints of ‘We wuz robbed’ and gripes about BBC bias were an unhelpful distraction.

Smith even downplayed the idea of an UK exit from Europe against Scotland’s wishes triggering another referendum, saying there was nothing automatic about the timing.

His plea for “patience” and “pragmatism” is the most explicit attempt yet from a serving SNP politician to dampen expectations of an ‘Indyref2’ among the party’s 112,000 members, in case it provokes a voter backlash at next year’s Holyrood election

In a speech on Friday to mark the anniversary of last year’s vote, Nicola Sturgeon said there were “no short cuts” to independence, and its advocates still had much to do.

“Independence won't happen just because its supporters become more impatient for change. An even more committed, enthusiastic and impatient 45% is still just 45%,” she said.

Smith, who is also a member of the SNP’s ruling national executive, goes further.

Asked in a media briefing in Brussels if talk of a second referendum was helpful for the SNP, he said: “No, absolutely not. I don’t think we’d be thanked for bringing one forward by lots of people who might be minded to vote No. There’s a lot of other things going on in Scotland that we need to kick on, the economy, people still struggling in their day-to-day. I don’t think there’s an appetite beyond the 30 per cent of the population that really wants to see this happen... my team. It’s only a year.”

He went on: “We’ve had the decision. We respect the decision. I think there are lots of things we can do with enhanced devolution. I think that’s where people really want us to be. The more we talk about not accepting the result of the Scottish people, ‘We wuz robbed’, the BBC was against us... I just don’t see that it helps.”

He said his view was widely shared at the top of the SNP.

“Nicola has had the best line on this. It will happen when the people of Scotland want it to happen - and I don’t think the people want it to happen any time soon.”

Asked about Sturgeon’s predecessor, Alex Salmond, talking up a second referendum “sooner rather than later,” Smith said pointedly: “That’s up to him. He’s always going to do his stuff.”

An MEP since 2004, the 42-year-old has a history of speaking hard truths to his party.

In the SNP conference debate on Nato membership in 2012, he was booed and jeered by delegates for telling them opposition to joining the nuclear alliance was “hopelessly naive”.

His warning about focusing on another referendum is likely to be equally controversial.

Sturgeon last week confirmed the SNP’s 2016 manifesto would set out the “appropriate” circumstances and timescales for a second referendum, and later said the UK leaving the EU against Scotland’s wishes could make demand for a new vote “unstoppable”.

However Smith squashed the idea that ‘Brexit’ would automatically mean a new referendum.

He said: “I don’t see that the idea of Brexit is anything more than... a significant change to the settlement upon which the people of Scotland voted No. But what happens after that, timing, I don’t think anything is automatic at all. Not for a second.”

Former SNP leader Gordon Wilson has also called for the SNP to de-couple Brexit and Indyref2, in case the UK votes No before the SNP is able to win an independence vote.

Smith said the SNP was “still licking its wounds” after the No vote: “We’re shattered. Our focus is Holyrood right now [and the 2016 election]... I’m utterly pro-independence still. I don’t think we lost the argument, but we assuredly lost the vote. We need to be a bit sanguine about that and get on with the day-to-day job that the people of Scotland have sent us to do.”

Scottish Tory Chief whip said: “Alyn Smith appears to be talking sense here – it’s a shame senior members of the party in Scotland won’t listen. But voters will be rightly confused, because while the SNP’s man in Brussels says this, Nicola Sturgeon is using aggressive phrases like the ‘UK is on borrowed time’.”

Smith also hinted that if there was a second referendum, the SNP could drop its position on sharing the pound with the rest of the UK: “That was our proposition then [in 2014]. I don’t think there’s anything that binds our hands for what our proposition is going to be in the hypothetical event of a future referendum.”