Around a third of SNP voters are said to have not been persuaded by leader Nicola Sturgeon on one of her central policies – that Scotland, and the UK, should remain in Europe. Bearing in mind the party's dominance and popularity, that will be the largest anti-EU block of voters in Scotland. Analysis from The Guardian suggests that around a quarter of a million SNP voters could end up voting Leave next month, if polls are to be believed.



Some Leave sources are adamant that includes a handful of SNP MPs and MSPs who simply aren't allowed to speak up. Gary Parker, a pro-independence activist who is leading a small anti-EU group called SNP GO – an unofficial branch of the UK-wide Grassroots Out campaign – insists that he has had private conversations with MPs and MSPs who want to leave the EU, but that any dissent in the party is quickly shouted down.

"MPs and MSPs have attended meetings with us and they’ve said that they’re scared – they won't admit it because they can't step out of line with the party," claimed Parker, whom former SNP leader Jim Sillars, one of the most prominent Leave voices in Scotland, asked to take the reins of the SNP GO campaign.

"One of my team pitched a Scottish Vote Leave stand in one of the SNP’s normal places and they went mental. The convener of the branch said, 'You’re out the party, you’re finished.' I’m friends with [SNP MP] Corri Wilson ... and I said to her ‘Tell me I didn’t hear this right’ and she said she’d sort it, which she did. But the abuse he got from his friends who he’s [previously] campaigned with was absolutely vicious."