SCOTTISH Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie is “keen to encourage” Labour and Tory MSPs to quit their parties and align with so-called independents south of the border, he said at the weekend.

Speaking at his party’s conference in Hamilton yesterday, Mr Rennie said there had been a “huge paradigm shift” in British politics.

But Labour said the Independent Group, which was formed in Westminster this week by leading Blairites and later joined by three pro-EU Tories, would end up in the “same irrelevant position” as the Scottish Lib Dems.