NICK Clegg has admitted fighting a second Scottish referendum would be very difficult given the “compelling case” for independence for a majority of Scots who want to remain in the European Union but are being taken out of it against their wishes.

In a significant intervention in the post-Brexit vote constitutional debate, the former Deputy Prime Minister warned, towards the end of the Brexit process, of a “very serious clash among the constituent parts of the United Kingdom”.

Speaking at a Westminster press gallery lunch, the former Liberal Democrat leader explained: “If the clash becomes a clash about the stated opinion of English voters that they want to leave the EU compared to the stated opinion of Scottish voters that they want to stay, it’s going to be incredibly difficult…to say to Scottish voters that they should swallow their reservations and vote for the Union nonetheless.”

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He went on: “I’m a Unionist. I don’t like Nationalism. Nationalism/chauvinism is a profoundly illiberal creed, so it really distresses me this idea it’s going to be very difficult to mount a powerful argument when there is such a compelling case for those who say: ‘Look, it’s not our choice…we have been forced by events entirely beyond our control.’ It’s going to be really tough.”

Ahead of the EU referendum vote, Mr Clegg claimed that if the UK were to vote for Brexit, then it would have “no empire, no Union and no special relationship”.

He was asked, given the result of the June 23 poll, if he still believed Scotland would become independent and cause the break-up of Britain.

The former deputy premier stressed how Brexit had not happened yet and so the country was in a “phoney phase” between the vote and the final settlement.

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But he warned our European partners would be “flinty and hard-headed” because their first priority would be to “stop Brexit being the catalyst for the wider unravelling of their club”.

“So, therefore, when all this pans out, when it becomes obvious to the Scottish people, the British people, particular to those communities in the UK who voted overwhelmingly to stay, given there’s no neat way of squaring the circle of that fundamental contradiction of the Government’s approach to free trade, on the one hand, and untrammelled sovereignty, on the other, then it will, maybe with a delayed timetable, nonetheless provoke a very serious clash among the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.”

Mr Clegg argued that the normal pendulum swing of politics between Tory and Labour governments had been stopped.

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Noting how it was “partly because the SNP have now kneecapped Labour north of the border,” the former deputy premier explained: “Unless you think Labour can beat the Conservatives south of the border by winning more seats in England than the Tories – which is nigh on impossible – Labour cannot under the present arrangements win a majority of its own again.”