HE was perhaps the biggest voice of the intellectual world opposing Scottish independence. Now writer Mario Vargas Llosa believes what he has always called "separation" is likely.

The Nobel Prize winner has declared that Brexit will result, simply, "in the disappearance of Great Britain".

"The most probable outcome is that Scotland - sooner or later - will separate," he said at an Madrid forum organised by his think tank, the International Foundation for Liberty. And Northern Ireland too, he added. Because "it is the great beneficiary of EU integration".

READ MORE: Mario Vargas Llosa losing the plot over Scottish nationalism

Peruvian-born Vargas Llosa - who used to live in Britain and now stays in Spain- has been a vocal and sometimes vitriolic opponent of independence movements across Europe, including Catalonia's.

The now 83-year-old welcomed the No victory in the 2014 referendum in an editorial in El País which many saw as an eloquent articulation of the instinctive unionism of some European internationalists.

Back in 2014, Mr Vargas Llosa wrote: "I lived in Britain for many years and it still seems to me to be the most civilised and democratic country in the world. I was conviced that the disappearance of this nation of four nations would be a disaster not just for England and Scotland but for all Europe, where it would encourage the separatists mushrooming across the continent."

Earlier still, in a 2012 interview with The Herald, Mr Vargas Llosa had railed against Scottish independence, warning of tribal appeals.

"The basic idea of nationalism is wrong," he said. "The idea that to be born in a given place is a value in itself is ridiculous. Totally ridiculous! Now the Scots want to be independent. That would be very sad. I don't think Scotland is going to be privileged by independence. On the contrary, this is not the march of time – the march of time is for the dissolution of frontiers, integration, common denominators."

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Scroll forward five years and Mr Vargas Llosa struck a different note. According to Europa Press, he believes Brexit is a terrible mistake but hopes for further delays. Brexit, he said, was "a tragedy for Britain and for Europe".

There is a lesson to learn from Brexit, he said. "These accidents can take place in the most advanced nations on the planet, in an examplary democracy." Mr Vargas Llosa, however, reserved his toughest words for Tory leadership front-runner Boris Johnson. If Mr Johnson wins, his party will "undergo an even bigger disaster" than Brexit.

READ MORE: Mario Vargas Llosa losing the plot over Scottish nationalism

Mr Llosa Varga, a former Peruvian presidential candidate knows Scotland and Ireland well. His novel, The Dream Of The Celt, is a fictionalised biography of the Irish-born diplomat, poet and revolutionary Roger Casement, who remains one of Ireland's most contentious national heroes and who was executed for treason in 1916. "A tragic hero, a great fighter against the false mythology of colonisation," the writer said.