PRO-INDEPENDENCE groups should set aside their differences and come together to help deliver an SNP majority at next year’s Holyrood election and facilitate indyref2 later in 2021, the SNP’s Westminster leader has said.

Ian Blackford said the SNP could arguably have done “much more” to engage with the wider indy movement in the past, and added: “That’s a commitment that I’m making – I’ll make sure that we do and it’s a commitment I personally give.”

The MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber was speaking in an exclusive interview with The National, during which he said a second referendum would be held in 2021, but that it would require an SNP majority at Holyrood to make sure Westminster listens.

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He said: “First and foremost we need to secure the referendum next year and I’m saying this unambiguously that the only way that we can really secure that victory to determine that Westminster listens is a majority SNP government.

“I’m asking people to lay aside their differences to make sure we can deliver on that.

“I’m not seeking to be disrespectful to anybody else, I’ve got full respect among others, for the Greens, for the job that they do, and they’re valued colleagues in the independence movement.

“But unless the SNP can achieve a majority government, then it’s going to increase the scale of the challenge and delivering on the objective.”

Blackford said there was a “plurality of voices” in the indy movement and he wanted the people of Scotland to have a choice about the kind of government they want by opening up a debate on what should be done on economic, social and other policies.

“I’m not for one minute suggesting that the SNP programme is the only programme,” he said.

“We need to make sure that there are voices right across the political spectrum that are part of that debate about how we shape this new country because there’s a tremendous job for us to do, and I’m absolutely determined that we don’t win independence for the sake of it.

“The point of independence is because we want to deliver something different.”

That means dealing with poverty, inequality and fairness, as well as delivering on the green agenda and creating an industrial strategy out of that “green revolution”, he said.

Blackford added that experience around the world showed smaller countries tended to move faster and have the best outcomes on, for instance, health equality and life expectancy: “All these things which are the fundamentals of what we seek to do.”

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He said: “I want us to have the debate about how they do these things, and we need to have the breadth of other opinions within all of that.

“Let’s make sure that we take the minority on the Unionist side with us because they can then see that what we’re seeking to do is build an inclusive Scotland where everyone’s opinion will be respected.”

Blackford said his plea for unity also extended to groups such as Scottish Yes Tories: “That’s an important point because I want to get to a place where we’re able to discuss ideas, where there is a gentler – maybe an aspiration, but an aspiration for the gentler kind of politics, where it’s not a case that we’d necessarily always be the ones that are right and others are wrong.

“It needs to be about creating a purpose of national unity where what we’re seeking to do is to deliver an outcome which is going to improve the life chances of people that live in this country … and it needs the breadth of voices to be able to do that right across the political spectrum. But let’s work together to do that.”