STEPHEN FLYNN has claimed the SNP stands “within touching distance” of winning the overall majority in Holyrood and craves to call for a second referendum on separation.

The SNP’s Westminster leader compared First Minister John Swinney’s “calm, thoughtful and trusted leadership” with the “chaos” he argued was the “permanent pattern” of UK government as he addressed his party’s pre-election conference in Edinburgh.

As the SNP bids for a fifth term and third decade in office, the MP — tipped as a future SNP leader should he succeed in his bid to win the Holyrood seat of Aberdeen South in May’s elections — insisted it was “within touching distance of the majority that will give our nation a fresh start with independence.”

He added: “When the world is so uncertain, there can never be a better time to create our own future.

“Because I don’t want to live in the relic of Thatcher and Blair’s Britain. I don’t want to live in Starmer’s Britain.

“I certainly don’t want to live in Farage’s Britain.”

He slammed Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite warning of his links with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, telling conference: “Make no mistake, they appointed that man to high office time and again, not because they didn’t know who he was — but because they knew exactly who he was.

“They saw his ease with power, wealth, the dark arts, not as alarm bells ringing, but as boxes ticked.”

Mr Mandelson’s eventual sacking, he argued, was “nothing to do with the victims,” but instead “all about trying to save Keir Starmer, whose defence is that he is the most gullible former director of public prosecutions in history.”