RUTH Davidson has rejected suggestions that the Scottish Tories could break away from the UK Conservative Party.

Peter Duncan, the former Conservative Chairman, suggested that, if Boris Johnson became the next Prime Minister, it could create an existential crisis for the party north of the border.

This echoed a sentiment expressed to The Herald last month by Stephen Kerr, the Tory MP for Stirling, who warned a Johnson premiership would increase the "urgency" for the Scottish Conservatives to reposition themselves away from the UK party and become a more autonomous sister organisation.

Ruth Davidson: I considered not coming back to Holyrood

Mr Duncan claimed if the former Foreign Secretary won the party's leadership election, it could open up a "chasm of epic proportions".

Last October, Scottish Tories launched their own campaign to scupper Mr Johnson winning the Tory crown; it was dubbed "Operation Arse".

Speaking on the BBC's Andrew Marr programme, Ms Davidson said revisiting a proposal put forward in 2011 by Murdo Fraser, that the party could break away from the UK party, was not something that she would ever back.

"It's within the gift of the party but it's nothing that I've ever supported," declared the party leader.

"Indeed, my entire leadership pitch back in 2011 was predicated on the idea that we wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom party, but with the autonomy for candidate selection, policy, financing and all of these other things that come under my purview.

"There was a suggestion from one of the other candidates in that leadership election that a breakaway would be something that they would look at, along the kind of German CDU/CSU model, but that is not something I have ever supported, I don't support and I wouldn't support in the future."

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Ms Davidson also decried the call from Nicola Sturgeon to hold a second independence referendum before the Holyrood vote in 2021.

Pointing out how a recent poll suggested just 21 per cent of Scots wanted another vote in Scotland’s future in that timescale, the party leader said: “The FM did her annual rolling out of ‘let’s ask for another indyref. Come with me lads, independence is just over the next hill.’

“Now, we’re getting pretty sick of it in Scotland. But there is way it can be taken off the table and that is to replace the SNP as the largest party at Holyrood in 2021, and that’s what I intend to do.”

It was pointed out to Ms Davidson how in 2016 she said the UK Government should not stand in the way of a second independence referendum in Scotland.

But she explained: "We know from the devolved settlement that issues of the constitution are reserved to Westminster; that's plainly a fact. After the last independence referendum, we had a big broad discussion about what powers should lie where and the SNP didn't even ask for the powers to be devolved.

"So this is a new wheeze from Nicola Sturgeon that comes up every year with a different reason for what she wants to do," added the Edinburgh MSP.

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The Scottish Tory leader also said that she was hopeful that a deal on leaving the EU could be reached at Westminster.

"We need to get this deal over the line and what it requires is a majority of people in the House of Commons to vote for it.

"Now we've gotten pretty close, we're getting closer and closer to where that middle ground might be and I would urge my colleagues in the House of Commons to start taking those first steps to walk back to something in the middle because we need to get Brexit done, we need to get it sorted and we need to allow the country to move on."