Nicola Sturgeon’s push for independence following last week’s Brexit vote threatens to transform Scotland into “Greece without the sun” because its economy is far more reliant on the UK than the EU, a right-wing think tank has warned.

The Centre for Policy Studies acknowledged that the First Minister stating a second independence referendum is “highly likely” has some merit from a democratic standpoint, given 62 per cent of Scots that voted chose to remain in the EU.

But it questioned the “economic logic” of independence, noting that Scotland trades more than four times as much with the UK as other EU nations and warning that leaving one union for the other would expose it to even more significant risks.

Among the major problems it highlighted with Ms Sturgeon’s plan to leave the UK and join the EU were adopting the single currency, greater exposure to “shocks” in other Eurozone economies, the total collapse in North Sea revenues and Scotland’s massive budget deficit.

Although the report conceded Scotland’s position would not be directly comparable, it concluded that Greece’s extreme economic troubles “undoubtedly serve as useful reminder that countries with challenging public finances can end up suffering inside the euro.”

The strident warning about the economic ramifications of Ms Sturgeon’s stance came as Jim Sillars, the SNP’s former deputy leader, also argued that the rest of the UK is a far more significant market for Scottish goods than the EU.