Historian David Starkey has defended comparing the SNP to the Nazis and insisted there are "striking" similarities between the two parties.
In an interview with Sunday Times yesterday, Starkey said Nicola Sturgeon's and Adolf Hitler's nationalism shared many traits. “You have as a symbol the twisted cross: the saltire or the swastika," he said.
Appearing on Sky News this morning, he was asked if he was sorry for the offence his words had caused. "No of course not. We have this awful idiotic PC politics," he said.
"The SNP is a virulently nationalist party of a type we have not had in Britain. It models itself on continental extreme nationalist movements of the 1930s."
Starkey said: "I'm not saying they are about to set up concentration camps. I'm not saying that we are going not see kristallnacht of English business in Edinburgh. But the resemblances are striking and are worrying. It's time we called things by their proper name.
"We spent years fussing in Britain about completely minor fringe things like the BNP and whatever - they are nothing compared with the Scottish nationalist party which has seized control of a whole country and is pushing this kind of radical agenda. They talk about civic nationalism, the word civic is merely a fig leaf, or perhaps bearing in mind its Scotland, a jock strap."
When it was pointed out that 50% of Scottish voters chose to send an SNP MP to Westminster at the general election, he said: "Yes of course. But sorry, lots of people have voted for very unpleasant leaders. I shan't mention the word Hitler. Democracy doesn't always get it right.
In his Sunday Times interview, Starkey suggested that a desire to blame England for Scotland’s problems was similar to Hitler blaming Jewish people for Germany’s economic crash.
He said: “We have a political movement that has a single historic explanation for why your country is facing such terrible oppression; it’s either Versailles or the Treaty of the Union. You have a particular group of people who are responsible for this; it is either the English or the Jews.”
He added: “You have as a symbol the twisted cross: the saltire or the swastika. You have a passionate belief in economic self-sufficiency: known by the Nazis as autarky and the Scots as oil."