RICHARD Leonard and Jeremy Corbyn have been called on again to explain why they back leaving the single market, despite studies by both the UK and Scottish Government that the move will cause major economic damage.

With the UK Labour leader to visit Scotland today, the STUC and SNP have urged him to tell voters why he is refusing to back a so-called soft Brexit – forecast to be the least worst Brexit scenario, though still leading to a 2.5 per cent drop in economic growth.

Despite the warnings, Corbyn is due to say the economy is “failing people right across Scotland” and has accused the Scottish Government of being “too timid” against the powerful.

The leaked Brexit impact analysis papers, finally released last week to MPs, revealed the severe impact a hard Brexit is set to cause the Scottish economy – with a forecasted fall in Scottish GDP of up to nine per cent.

Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) general secretary Grahame Smith yesterday criticised both Corbyn and Leonard’s position on Brexit, demanding they “get their act together” to stop a hard Brexit and “at the very least” back membership of the single market.

“The Labour leadership has got to get its act together and ditch its longstanding and lukewarm attitude to the EU,” Smith told our sister paper the Sunday Herald. “At the very minimum they should campaign to remain in the single market.”

Joan McAlpine, the SNP MSP added: “The leak of Whitehall Brexit analysis means the cat is out of the bag on the crippling cost of leaving the single market and customs union. Everybody now agrees it will inflict catastrophic damage on Scotland’s economy, with fewer jobs and lower living standards.

“The Labour leadership have no more excuses. Jeremy Corbyn must explain why he has so meekly signed up for this Tory hard Brexit.

“Labour and the Tories have revived the Better Together band of the indyref years, and working people are set to pay the price.

The appeals came as it emerged Theresa May is set to make two keynote addresses in a bid to regain the initiative on Brexit after a rocky few weeks during which Cabinet tensions came to the surface.

The three leading Brexiteers – Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Brexit Secretary David Davis, and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox – are also to deliver speeches, but the only minister to back Remain taking part in the project is Cabinet Office Minister David Lidington.

Chancellor Philip Hammond, who favours a softer Brexit, will not take part in the co-ordinated bid to set out the Government’s position.

Justice Secretary David Gauke told ITV’s Peston on Sunday: “[Hammond] is not part of the set of speeches that have been outlined today, but that doesn’t mean that the Chancellor is not expressing his views both internally in the Cabinet conversations, but also externally.

“So, I don’t think that there really is anything in this, that this is somehow any kind of plot to gag a particular faction of ministers. I don’t think that’s a fair characterisation at all.”

Johnson will kick-off the Brexit blitz on Wednesday with a call for unity over Brexit.

May will deliver a major speech on post-Brexit UK-EU security in Germany on Saturday, and will round-off the process in about three weeks time with a keynote address on the overall EU-UK future relationship.

Tory tensions continue to simmer with leading Remainer Anna Soubry delivering a warning to the PM. Asked if she believed there is a majority in the Commons to defeat “the kind of Brexit the Prime Minister wants”, she told BBC’s Andrew Marr show: “If she’s not careful, yes.”