ALEX Salmond has insisted he is completely at one with Nicola Sturgeon on the key issues at stake in the General Election after he suggested the June 8 poll was about the drive towards Scottish independence but she sought to downplay any such link.

Last week, the First Minister said the election was "not about independence or about another referendum".

During his weekly radio programme, Mr Salmond reassured a listener that there would be another vote on Scotland's future within five years, saying: "The General Election is to reinforce the right of the Scottish Parliament to decide when the time is right for another independence referendum and if you get that sort of overwhelming vote for the SNP, then the PM's opposition will crumble."

Asked by Andrew Neil on the BBC"s Sunday Politics programme if there was a different message being put by himself and Ms Sturgeon on whether or not independence was behind the June 8 poll, Mr Salmond replied: "No. I have said exactly the same as Nicola Sturgeon on that.

"The issue of independence will be decided in a national referendum of the Scottish people. The mandate for that referendum was gained in last year's Scottish elections. What this election is about is backing the right of the Scottish Parliament to exercise that mandate and also providing real opposition to this Tory Government and of course allowing the Scottish Parliament to resist austerity and some of the public expenditure cutbacks that you've been talking about. That is what this election is about: backing our Scottish Parliament."

The MP for Gordon's remarks came as a poll found a majority of Scottish voters said they believed the SNP would have the right to hold a second independence referendum if the party won more than half of the Scottish seats in the election.

Mrs May has been clear that "now is not the time" for another ballot on Scotland's place in the UK despite Ms Sturgeon's demands for the issue to be put to the people again in the wake of Brexit and despite Holyrood mandating her to ask Westminster to facilitate another vote.

A Panelbase poll for the Sunday Times Scotland found that 52 per cent of voters believed the PM should not stand in the way of a fresh referendum if the FM made a manifesto commitment to try to secure one and won a majority of the Scottish seats.

In 2015, the SNP won a landslide in Scotland, winning 56 out of 59 seats. Opinion polls have suggested the Tories will gain a number of seats from the Nationalists but it is widely expected that Ms Sturgeon's party will again win the lion's share of Westminster constituencies, well above the 30 needed to secure a majority of them.

Whitehall insiders have made clear that Mrs May does not want another Scottish poll any time in the near or medium term future. David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, has said that the Tory Government would not even begin talking about a second referendum until after the Brexit "process" is completed, which could, technically, run well beyond 2019.

Some Tory ministers believe Mr Salmond was right when he said the 2014 vote was for a generation ie 20 years.

Meantime, the Panelbase survey placed support for independence at 45 per cent, unchanged from the 2014 referendum.

The survey found 41 per cent favoured independence for Scotland inside the EU while 10 per cent supported Scottish independence outwith the EU. Some 48 per cent said they would prefer Scotland to remain inside the UK but outside the EU.

A similar poll last Sunday found that a third of Scottish voters intended to support the Tories on June 8. It suggested 33 per cent were backing Ruth Davidson's Scottish Conservatives, which would put them on course to win a clutch of new seats.