THE SNP needs to attract the support of Tory voters in rural Scotland to win a new independence referendum, according to the runner up in the party’s recent depute leadership contest.

Julie Hepburn, a leading activist who secured 45% of the vote against former Economy Secretary Keith Brown in the internal election, said activists should engage with Conservative supporters to build backing for the Yes case.

Independence is an inclusive concept that everyone in Scotland can get behind. It is a wonderfully simple statement of fact – that the best people to make decisions about Scotland are the people who live here,” she wrote in an article in today’s National.

“There is nothing inherently incompatible with supporting both independence for Scotland and the Conservatives in Scotland.

“Just as there is nothing incompatible with feeling a sense of Britishness, while wholeheartedly supporting independence for Scotland. Independence is simply about sovereignty and the transfer of decision-making from Westminster to Scotland.”

Her comments follow a debate over a controversial banner saying “Tory Scum Out” which has been carried at pro-independence marches held across the country in the past few weeks.

Its presence prompted criticism from Glasgow SNP MP Stewart McDonald and Energy Minister and South of Scotland MSP Paul Wheelhouse, who said the banner could alienate the very voters the independence side was trying to persuade.

Her intervention also follows the publication of the SNP’s new economic blueprint, which sets out to convince people who backed No in 2014 to switch to Yes.

Last month Andrew Wilson, chair of the Growth Commission which delivered the report, said pro-Union figures had privately told him its findings strengthened the independence case.