SIR KEIR STARMER’S claims that opponents would need a “long, long, search” to find division between Scottish and UK Labour, have been branded by nationalists as “ludicrous.”

The Labour leader’s comments were made in Edinburgh ahead of a visit to Rutherglen and Hamilton West constituency — the site of a forthcoming by-election in which differences between Scottish Labour and UK Labour policy on the two-child cap and the bedroom tax have been brought into sharp relief.

When asked about the two-child cap, which has been branded the “worst of the welfare ‘reforms’ of the last 13 years” by the Poverty Alliance’s Peter Kelly, Sir Keir said it stays, while Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar has said he would press the next Labour government to scrap the Tory policy.