ANGUS Robertson has been elected the SNP’s deputy leader with an emphatic mandate.

The Moray MP, who is already the SNP group leader at Westminster, emerged victorious after the first round of voting when the results were announced at the opening of the SNP conference yesterday.

Mr Robertson secured 52.5 per cent of members' votes, followed by Edinburgh East MP Tommy Sheppard on 25.5 per cent, MEP Alyn Smith on 18.6, and Inverclyde councillor Chris McEleny on 3.4.

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After the declaration, Mr Robertson said he was “bowled over” by the result and promised to deliver on his campaign themes: leadership, the party grassroots and independence.

He said: "We are the most effective political party in this country, our strength comes from our members, our branches, our local grassroots campaigning and our partnership with councillors and parliamentarians. We have big challenges ahead and big opportunities.

"We are very, very close to independence and we must start campaigning right now to persuade people who did not vote Yes in 2014. I believe that the SNP depute leader has a big job to make this happen and I will work with Nicola Sturgeon to make this happen."

He said it made “perfect sense” that the SNP was now led by an urban MSP in Nicola Sturgeon in Holyrood and a rural MP in Westminster as her deputy.

“We are the Scottish National party. We represent the whole of the country, regardless of where you come from and we should never forget that.”

He also said he wanted to work with his rivals - on Mr Sheppard’s plans for internal reform, Mr Smith’s focus on Europe, and Mr McEleny’s prioritisation of the 2017 council elections.

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He will speak again at the conference today in a session on the SNP’s work at Westminster, where its 54 MPs have made it the third largest party, and given it unprecedented influence - an achievement attributable in large part to Mr Robertson’s work on campaign strategy.

A long-term friend of the First Minister, the MP had been seen as the choice of the SNP leadership, with Mr Sheppard seen as far more likely to create waves in the party.

A former Scottish Labour official who only joined the SNP as a result of the independence referendum, Mr Sheppard had stood on a platform of internal reform and reviving the SNP’s moribund policy-making apparatus to empower its 125,000 members - a tacit criticism of the current leadership and the centralisation of power under Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon.

Mr Sheppard also wanted an outright ban on fracking in Scotland.

Although Mr Robertson won comfortably, the figures suggest that if it the field had not been split, Mr Sheppard might have run him close in a two-horse race.

Ms Sturgeon said Mr Robertson would be an “outstanding” deputy.

She said: “We have four first class candidates to choose from. W e had more quality in our race for deputy than Labour managed in its election for leader.”

Mr Robertson replaces Stewart Hosie, who resigned from the depute's post in the spring after it was revealed he had been having an affair with former actress Serena Cowdry.

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Mr Hosie also split from his wife, the health secretary Shona Robison, at the time.

Mr Robertson, 47, has been the party's Westminster leader since 2010.

His UK-wide profile rose after the SNP won 56 of Scotland's 59 Westminster seats in the 2015 general election, giving him a weekly platform at Prime Minister's Questions.

Born in London to Scottish and German parents, he grew up in Edinburgh before attending university in Aberdeen

He worked as a journalist and then as a European and international affairs adviser to SNP MSPs at Holyrood before he was elected to Westminster in 2001 to represent Moray.

He served as the party's defence spokesman and in 2015 was appointed as a member of the Privy Council and the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee.

He was the party's campaigns director for the 2007 and 2011 Scottish elections, and previously served as the business convener, chairing the SNP's National Executive Committee, the annual national conference and the policy making forum National Council.

Shortly after Mr Robertson’s win was announced, delegates voted against extending the system used to elect him to the Scottish Parliament.

A motion from the SNP’s Aberdeen South & North Kincardine Constituency Association had advocated the Single Transferrable Vote (STV), which has been used in council elections since 2007, also be used for Holyrood instead of the current additional member system.

However former minister Marco Biagi and MSP Kenneth Gibson warned many countries had tried STV as a more proportional method, but given up when it failed in practice.

Delegates voted instead for an amendment recommending a review of voting methods after the 2017 council elections, but without committing the party to any system in particular.