RICHARD Leonard has provoked fury by branding Nicola Sturgeon the “most divisive politician since Margaret Thatcher” over her push for a second independence referendum.

The new Scottish Labour leader made the outspoken attack yesterday as he said he would not back a second vote on independence which the First Minister wants to stage.

She has said she will decide later this year when to move on a new referendum as the outcome of the Brexit negotiations become clear and has insisted she has a mandate to call a new vote on the issue following her party’s 2016 election manifesto.

It called Scots to be able to vote on the issue again if Scotland voted to remain in the EU and the UK voted to leave. The pro-independence majority of SNP and Green MSPs at Holyrood also voted in favour of a second referendum last year.

But the new Labour leader told BBC Sunday Politics Scotland that that Holyrood vote “sparked a real polarisation of opinion in Scotland. I’ve never witnessed, since the days of Margaret Thatcher, a political leader that was so divisive because of that call she has made for a second referendum. That’s why I think the SNP have been forced to row back from it.”

His comments sparked anger among the SNP and people on social media yesterday. SNP MP Pete Wishart tweeted: “Pete Wishart claims Richard Leonard is ‘most useless UK politician since all the other SLab leaders.”

Replying to Wishart, Twitter user Andrew Harries posted: “That’s hilarious. Has he not met @theresa_may or @BorisJohnson or @Nigel_Farage or.................”

During the same interview Leonard was also pressed on his party’s position on Brexit, and said there was a “compelling case” for membership of the customs union, but refused to back single market membership. He said the UK wide vote to leave the EU must be respected, which he said, would not be the case if the UK remained in the single market. He also said he may be “open minded” about a separate immigration policy for Scotland following the Scottish Government’s analysis last week that EU nationals contribute £4.4 billion a year to the economy north of the Border.

A SNP spokesman said: “The idea that Richard Leonard needs to see how Brexit pans out before deciding on his position is utterly absurd — if an asteroid were hurtling toward the earth right now, no doubt Leonard would say we need to wait and see what destruction it causes before deciding what to do about it.

“Leonard is of course right to say that there is a “compelling case” for being in the EU Customs Union — the only question is why he is not making that case to Jeremy Corbyn, before it is too late.”

He added: “While the referendum on independence produced an outpouring of democratic debate about how we could empower ourselves to make Scotland fairer and more prosperous, the 1980s demonstrated what can happen when those powers are left in the hands of a Westminster Tory government which Scotland did not vote for.”

The UK Government has indicated it would block a second referendum before the next Holyrood election in 2021. Responsibility for the constitution lies at Westminster. Leonard said: “I’m there to represent the interests of the Scottish Labour party and we’ve been absolutely clear that we do not see the case, within just a matter of years, for a second independence referendum ... I’m absolutely firm on the question of whether there should be a second independence referendum or not — there should not be. There’s no case for it.”