Former first minister of Scotland Alex Salmond has said the Scottish Government was wrong to go to the Supreme Court to establish whether Holyrood can legislate for a second independence referendum.

The Alba Party leader also said that all independence-supporting parties should run on a united ticket if the Scottish Government uses a general election as a de facto independence referendum.

Speaking outside the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Salmond told the PA news agency: “The Scottish Government is asking the wrong question to the wrong court.

“They seem to be risking a great deal to gain comparatively little.

“Let’s say that they win this case. They’re going to win it on a very narrow argument, that it’s within the competence of the Scottish Parliament to have a referendum because it doesn’t matter, it’s not going to have any legal effect.

“That would be the argument it was won on, in which case the opponent of independents would say, ‘it doesn’t matter, that’s what you said in court’.”

“Whereas if they lose it, in the words of the Lord Advocate, the matter is finally resolved. If we’re going to resolve the issue of Scottish independence, then the people who resolve it are the Scottish people, not the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.”

He added that this was different to the first independence referendum because of the Edinburgh Agreement, “where both sides said they’d respect the outcome”.

Mr Salmond also said that if the Scottish Government fails in its Supreme Court bid and uses the next general election as a de facto referendum, then the independence supporting parties should join forces under a “Scotland United” ticket, like happened in the 1918 General Election.

He said: “If you’re going for the general election de facto referendum strategy then you have to make it special.

“You can’t just roll up and fight as political parties because people will say it’s a normal election. You’d have to fight it on (a) Scotland United (ticket) or something like that.

“You could fight an election with Scotland United SNP, Scotland United Greens and Scotland United Alba and then say, ‘This is clearly above political parties. This is just about the cause and case of Scottish independence’.

“That might work. It would be difficult, but it might work.”