Next year’s Holyrood election should be a “referendum on the SNP’s abysmal record in government”, the Scottish Tory leader insisted.

Russell Findlay added that Scots were “utterly sick and tired” of SNP politicians “constantly droning on about independence”.

He hit out at John Swinney’s party as SNP depute leader Keith Brown proclaimed that independence will be “the defining issue” in next year’s Scottish Parliament vote.

PA Media

Brown spoke out as he wrote to Mr Findlay and his Labour and Liberal Democrat counterparts Anas Sarwar and Alex Cole-Hamilton, pressing them on whether they agreed that Scotland has the “right” to decide its own future.

In the run up to the 2014 referendum, Labour, the Tories and the Liberal Democrats joined together to form the Better Together campaign to k

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