Mr Sillars was the deputy leader for the SNP in the early Nineties. He won his by-election in Glasgow Govan by a landslide after being a vocal advocate the party’s now well-known mantra of “Independence in Europe”, which turned out to be the first major disruption for the Labour Party which was the dominant group in Parliament at the time. While he still supports Scotland being independent from the rest of the UK, Mr Sillars has since changed his mind the idea of his country joining the European Union, branding it an “undemocratic” organisation.

He has become a dissident voice within the SNP against Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s continued pro-EU stance. Earlier this month, Mr Sillars even called on “whoever is in government”, in Westminster, to reject her request for a new Scottish independence referendum next year.

Despite the failure of her campaign in the 2014 independence referendum, Ms Sturgeon has recently claimed she intends to put in a request to Westminster for a second vote. 

She has explained how the result of the Brexit referendum encouraged her to call for another vote on leaving the Union only five years after the first, because the majority of Scots voted to remain in the EU.

However, in an interview with The National in May 2016, Brexiteer Mr Sillars said: “The statement that Nicola has made, that if Scotland votes to Remain and the rest vote to Leave can trigger a referendum, does not stand up to analysis.”

Mr Sillars continued: “That could only be the case if in the recent manifesto she had asked for a specific mandate if that happened, and she didn’t.”

He also claimed the party “don’t seem to be able to answer” the following question: “Isn’t it a contradiction to want to be independent of England in a country of 60 million people where we have nine percent representation in a sovereign parliament, to then want to be part of a larger union of 28 member states where our vote in the European Parliament is one percent and we would have very little influence?”

The former deputy leader said: “If they made an application to join the EU as an independent state they would find themselves rebuffed … as they were rebuffed in 2014. 

“The SNP seems to have had some sort of love affair with the EU and they are so entranced by it that they are incapable of looking at it and seeing it for what it is – an undemocratic organisation run by an unelected elite.

“The SNP seems incapable of analysing what is actually happening inside the EU.”

In a 2019 Scotsman interview, Mr Sillars also revealed how he thought the Europhile SNP leadership “alienated hundreds of thousands of independence-supporting ‘Leave’ voters in Scotland”. 

He added that he had found it “impossible” to vote in favour of his own party during the EU elections.

Yet, back in 2016, Mr Sillars maintained that he would not be leaving the party, despite disagreeing with one of its core policies ever since he snubbed Alex Salmond’s SNP leadership in 1992.

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The Eurosceptic said: “I think it is healthy for any political party if the voices of dissent are heard against the positions of the leadership. I see no reason for me to leave the SNP whatsoever.”

Mr Sillars explained earlier this month that he thought it was “the worst time for a referendum campaign led by the SNP” and branded Ms Sturgeon “foolish” for attempting to do so.

He even said: “[She is] engaged in a cynical exercise in manipulating the emotions of activists.”

The SNP announced this week that they were teaming up with the Liberal Democrats so that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s call for an election would go through the House of Commons.

The party is now preparing for a general election, where it will campaign in favour of ruling out no deal and on a pro-EU platform.

The SNP’s leader in the House of Commons, Ian Blackford, was even accused by Conservative MPs of delivering a “tortuous” speech yesterday in favour of the EU.

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