RUTH Davidson says the SNP will tell lies in any upcoming independence referendum, comparing the campaigning of Nicola Sturgeon’s party to Michael Gove and Boris Johnson’s big red bus during the EU referendum, which had a promise to spend £350 million on the NHS emblazoned on the side.

In a speech at the London School of Economics, the Scottish Tory leader said the SNP were seeking to “weaponise” Brexit.

“Despite the uncertainty, the insecurity and the challenges, the case for the Union – our Union – remains strong, if not stronger than it ever has been,” said Davidson. “We just have to ensure that we make the right case, for an outward-looking Britain that provides us all with the opportunities and the stability we all crave.”

In the wake of the vote to quit the EU, she said, the SNP is “itching to get its own campaign bus into gear. My view is that the case for the Union must be made afresh and we have to persuade people once again that our own union of nations still works for us all”.

An SNP spokesman said: “Ruth Davidson is resorting to fantasy and delusion in trying to deny the economic catastrophe a Tory hard Brexit threatens Scotland with.

We face being dragged out of the world’s biggest single market, which is around eight times larger than the UK’s alone, against our will, which shows that Theresa May and the Westminster Tories now think they can do anything they want to Scotland and get away with it.”