Nicola Sturgeon would lose independence referendum, says Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson

She said the First Minister had not yet asked for a Section 30 order, granting Holyrood the authority to hold an independence referendum, with Ms Davidson refusing to say if the UK Government should block such a request.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, elected leader in 2014 after an unsuccessful referendum to break away from the United Kingdom, has long said she will seek to give Scots a second vote if they are forced into a “hard Brexit” that would end their preferential access to the EU’s single market and free movement of labor.

In a speech nearly entirely devoted to criticising the SNP and making the case for the future of the United Kingdom, May said there was “no economic case” for Scottish independence.

The prime minister accused Ms Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party (SNP) of being so fixated on independence that it was failing to provide adequate services for the Scottish people.

She accused nationalists of “neglect and mismanagement” of education, “abysmal failure” on farm payments, “starving the health service”, and replacing stamp duty with a tax which costs home buyers more but brings in less revenue than expected.

In her speech, she said: “My first visit as Prime Minister was here to Scotland”.

Mrs May had earlier criticised the SNP-led government at Holyrood for having tunnel vision over a second Scottish independence referendum. The SNP play politics as though it were a game. She said there was mounting anxiety that Andrea Leadsom, the environment and agriculture secretary, wanted to impose a UK-wide agriculture policy and seize control over about £500m in Scottish farm subsidies. A Whitehall clawback of powers being repatriated from Brussels would make a second Scottish independence referendum more likely, … It is a serious business, centred on improving people’s lives, ‘ she wrote.

“Politics is not a game and I can’t help but feel that the SNP does treat it as a game and they have this tunnel vision of only looking at the issue of independence”.

On powers coming to Scotland from the European Union after Brexit, the Tory leader said her government needed to “ensure that the United Kingdom can operate as effectively as possible in the future”.

“But if we look at this question of independence for the future, I also think this – to me politics isn’t a game”. In return the UK Government’s has so far been one of obstinacy and intransigence.

The Tory leader attacked the SNP for being obsessed with the constitution, criticising them for wanting to take Scotland out of its biggest trading market.