15:52

Nicola Sturgeon has urged Scottish voters to treat both Labour and the Conservatives as pro-Brexit parties in the European elections, claiming only the Scottish National party has the weight to fight to remain in the EU.

Describing the vote on 23 May as the most important European election in Scotland’s history, the SNP leader and Scottish first minister also reiterated her call for a fresh referendum on Scottish independence before 2021, regardless of whether Brexit happens.

She said this was a “golden opportunity” for Scottish voters to reassert themselves at a UK and European level. She said:

It is striking, I would say depressingly, just how close together Labour and the Tories are on Brexit. On this defining issue of our time, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May have so much more in common than they like to pretend. They oth want to take Scotland and the UK out of the European Union. There is no escaping the fact that Labour is a pro-Brexit party, just as the Tories are a pro-Brexit party.

She said Labour was trying to face both ways at once, wanting to end freedom of movement but claim it wanted the closest possible partnership with the EU.

The latest opinion polls suggest the SNP will attract hundreds of thousands of pro-EU voters, chiefly at Labour’s expense. The SNP was at 40% in a recent YouGov poll and set to win at least three or possibly four of Scotland’s six European parliament seats.

With Change UK competing for pro-EU seats, and the Brexit party and Ukip chipping away at Tory support, Labour is down to 14% while the Tories are stranded at 10% and will struggle to hold their sole Scottish European seat.

Sturgeon will again face questions in this campaign about the apparently contradictory logic of wishing to take Scotland out of its centuries-old union with the UK but remain in a much larger European union.

Citing Croatia and Denmark have leading roles in the EU, she described the EU as “a collective of independent states”, and said an independent Scotland would have a seat “at the top table.” Within the UK, she added, Scotland’s voice on the EU was repeatedly ignored by the Conservative government in London.