PRO-Union campaigners have claimed they can halt a second independence referendum by mobilising the “silent majority” of 2014 to speak out and change Nicola Sturgeon’s mind.

The non-party Scotland in Union group launched “Project Listen” in Glasgow’s Lighthouse yesterday, with the aim of signing up a quarter of a million supporters by the summer.

Chief executive Graeme Pearson, a former Labour MSP and former head of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, insisted another referendum was “not inevitable”.

He said Scotland faced a “dismal cycle” of referendums until the Nationalists won, which he described as “Vote. Ignore. Repeat”.

He said: “I’m here to say independence is not inevitable and neither is another referendum. But we can only stop the nationalists if those who support Scotland in the UK find their voice.

“The silent majority spoke up in 2014. Now we must do it again.

“If we speak with one voice then the Scottish Government will be forced to hear us. Once they accused of being Project Fear. I say this time it’s Project listen. They can ignore us no more.”

He also claimed Nationalists saw the UK as “a foreign land full of Tories, racists and people who look down on Scotland”, but denied being anti-SNP.

The event, attended by around 100 voters, was no match for the SNP’s slick media operation.

In a dubious joke, people were issued with earplugs and asked to insert them to impersonate Ms Sturgeon failing to listen to voters; the sound failed in a video presentation; and Mr Pearson frequently tripped over his words, appearing at one point to say there could be a referendum following Brexit, before returning to his script.

There were audience attacks on the media being unfair to the Unionist cause, with one elderly woman shouting “get out” at a question from the BBC.

But there was also a passionate complaint from “Murdo from Lewis”, who said Ms Sturgeon had no right “to hijack my vote for Remain and take it as a mandate to leave the Union”.

He said: “I voted to remain not just in the EU but in the Union. The fact that it did not work out for us I took with good grace. I didn’t vote to leave the Union. I voted to stay in the EU.”

Mr Pearson said Scotland in Union was open to supporters all parties and none, and had no ambition to become the official No campaign in the referendum, like Better Together in 2014.

However he later told The Herald that if the group failed to stop a referendum, it would fight on, and could evolve into the official No side.

He said: “Who knows? If others came to Scotland in Union and made a proper presentation and said, ‘We think this is the way forward’, we’d be mad to say we’re not doing it.

“But what we won’t do is become a mechanism for party politics to be played out in Scotland.”

Meanwhile an anti-referendum petition on the House of Commons website was last night on course to receive the 100,000 signatures needed to considered for a parliamentary debate.

It said: “We in Scotland are fed up of persecution by the SNP leader who is solely intent on getting independence at any cost. As a result, Scotland is suffering hugely.”

Scottish Labour also emailed 150,000 Scots asking them to pledge their opposition to the SNP’s “divisive plans” at the togetherstronger.net website launched earlier this month.

Leader Kezia Dugdale said: “Nicola Sturgeon is offering false hope to working people across our country. And we need to expose that in the coming months. With your help, we can send a strong message that Scotland doesn’t need or want another referendum.”