THE Prime Minister cannot answer a simple question on how she would vote in another EU referendum because she is "hamstrung" by the loss of her parliamentary majority and a "divided party of right wing Brexiteers", the SNP's Ian Blackford has claimed.

The Highland MP said Theresa May had not been "straightforward" about how she would vote in a second poll as he challenged her on the issue during Prime Minister's Questions.

But the PM hit back, insisting there would be no second EU referendum. “The people of the UK voted and we will be leaving the EU in March 2019," she declared.

The row erupted after Mrs May had earlier refused to say that she would back Brexit if the referendum on quitting the EU were held now.

In a move likely to anger Tory Brexiteers, the PM, who backed Remain in the June 2016 vote, repeatedly side-stepped questions over which camp she would be in during a radio interview on Tuesday.

During PMQs, she side-stepped it again. Mr Blackford responded by saying: "The Prime Minister can't answer a simple question. The reason…is because she's hamstrung by the parliamentary majority and a divided party of right-wing Brexiteers.”

Declaring how now was the time for leadership, he asked: “Will the Prime Minister come off the fence and recognise that if we're to save this economy, we need to stay in the single market and the customs union?"

But to Tory cheers and Nationalist jeers, Mrs May said: "Now is the time for the SNP leadership to accept that to save jobs in Scotland they need Scotland to remain part of the UK."

Meanwhile, Liz Truss, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, became the second Remain-backing Cabinet minister to state that she would indeed vote for Brexit if a referendum were held now.

Ms Truss said that her expectation of immediate economic damage from a Leave vote had turned out to be wrong, and acknowledged that Treasury forecasts of its impact were not accurate.

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, recently said he had switched from Remain to Leave because former Chancellor George Osborne's gloomy economic predictions had failed to materialise.

In contrast, Damian Green, Mrs May’s deputy, admitted it "would have been" better if the UK had voted Remain but the First Secretary noted how the issue of a second EU poll was a “meaningless question because there's not going to be a referendum tomorrow, so it's a purely hypothetical question".

Indeed, a spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn, who voted Remain last year, declined to say which way the Labour leader would vote now.

"There isn't any referendum in prospect and nor do we support one," he said, adding, however, that Mrs May's response showed "she clearly has no confidence in her own negotiating platform".