VOTERS in England would prefer to lose Scotland than Gibraltar in the Brexit process, a new poll has found.

Pollsters from Panelbase asked people south of the Border for their views on a scenario in which the price of leaving the EU would be for the UK to be without Scotland or Northern Ireland or Gibraltar.

Voters expressed most concern about Gibraltar heading off, followed by Scotland, and were least concerned about Northern Ireland opting to go.

Some 37% said losing Gibraltar would not be a price worth paying for Brexit, while 35% said losing Scotland would not be worth it.

In terms of losing Northern Ireland just 31% said it was not a price worth paying for Brexit.

Some 1020 people were asked their views by researchers carrying out the poll, which was commissioned by pro-independence website Wings Over Scotland. The sample included both leave and remain voters.

The website's Stuart Campbell said: "Many will remember bitterly the short-lived 'lovebombing' campaign from the indyref, in which a list of semi-celebrities from the rest of the UK was assembled to assure Scots of how much they were valued and cherished by their UK partners.

"Four years on, not so much.

"Because overall, the voters of England – that’s Remainers and Leavers combined – would drop Scotland like a hot potato if it were somehow to be necessary in order to secure Brexit. (And remember, very nearly half of them don’t even WANT Brexit. How much must those guys hate us?) Just a third of English voters don’t think it’d be worth ditching Scotland to get out of the EU."

He added: "The only thing that our English cousins were almost reluctant (51-49 excluding Don't Knows) to sacrifice was the part of the UK that’s actually just a tiny rocky outcrop of someone else’s country and has roughly the same population as Dumfries or Irvine or Falkirk. (To be honest we’re kicking ourselves for not asking about the Falkland Islands now.)

"The people of England would, by a comfortable distance, rather hang on to the 34,000 citizens (plus some apes) of Gibraltar than the 7.2 million of Scotland and Northern Ireland, but they’d still quite happily surrender all three just to reduce the number of immigrants coming to the UK and trash the economy."