Former defence secretary John Reid unleashed a broadside at Holyrood yesterday in the row over shipbuilding in an independent Scotland.

He slammed slammed Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon's claim that an independent Scotland would continue to build warships for the rest of Britain.

The former Westminster minister said it was a "fact" that no British "government of any political stripe has ever commissioned the building of a warship in a foreign country."

Lib Dem Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael joined in the attack on Ms Sturgeon.

He said: "Nicola Sturgeon is looking pretty isolated on this. The best thing she could do is admit that she is wrong.

"The future of the Clyde yards is sustainable as part of a large and successful United Kingdom."

But Ms Sturgeon stuck to her guns, saying closing Portsmouth would leave the Clyde as "the only place on these shores with the capacity to build naval surface ships."

At the other end of Britain, unions launched a bitter fight to save manufacturing in Hampshire over the weekend.

Portsmouth was still reeling from the loss of 940 shipbuilding jobs at BAE when the Polimeri Europa synthetic rubber plant in nearby Hythe announced 300 job losses.

Hundreds of people flocked to Portsmouth on Saturday to vent their anger at destruction of jobs on the south coast.

Technical union Prospect's John Ferrett said the government policy on shipbuilding was flawed.

"Taking this decision a year before the Scottish independence vote is insane," he said.

"If Portsmouth closes and the Scottish people were to vote for independence we have no shipbuilding capability here in the UK."

nManufacturing union GMB plans to hold a mass picket outside BBC Question Time on Thursday to focus attention on to the issue of the manufacturing job losses in Hampshire.