SNP's Joanna Cherry and Angus Robertson will battle it out to stand in Edinburgh Central

Joanna Cherry is MSP for Edinburgh South West

TWO potential successors to Nicola Sturgeon wanting to be elected to Holyrood are to battle it out over the same city constituency.

Edinburgh South West MP Joanna Cherry, the SNP’s home affairs spokeswoman at Westminster, has confirmed she will seek the party’s nomination to stand in Edinburgh Central at next year’s Scottish Parliament election.

Her move came after the Evening News revealed last week that former SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson will also bid to become the candidate for the seat.

Angus Robertson was leader of the SNP group at Westminster

The contest between the two key Nationalist figures over Edinburgh Central will also be seen as a battle over the future direction of the party and the best way to win independence.

Mr Robertson is a supporter of Ms Sturgeon, while Ms Cherry has urged a bolder approach over Indyref2. She has argued that Holyrood should respond to Boris Johnson’s refusal to agree to a fresh independence vote by passing a Bill to hold a referendum and allowing it to be tested in court.

Announcing her bid for Central, Ms Cherry said she had lived in the constituency since 2002 and a significant part of it overlapped with her Westminster seat, including Gorgie, Dalry, Haymarket, Fountainbridge and part of Tollcross/Bruntsfield.

She continued: “I am very grateful to all the people who have approached me and encouraged me to put my hat in the ring when nominations open.

“Scotland must have the right to escape Boris Johnson’s Brexit; we must have the right to choose our own future and we need a strategy to get us to that point of decision.

“With a large Tory majority across England, the UK is set firmly on a hard Tory agenda for the next decade. Scotland will be completely ignored at Westminster, the movement for Scotland to be an independent European nation can only be realised from Holyrood and I want to offer my services where I think they can be of most use.

“I look forward to a forthcoming referendum on Scottish independence. SNP MPs at Westminster have never been there to settle down; I am for settling up. I choose Scotland and hope to be able to play my part as we create a modern independent state.”

Meanwhile, Ms Sturgeon has made clear she plans to stay on as SNP leader as she rubbished the idea of shortcuts to independence.

On the BBC’s Marr Show, she said: “I have just led my party to another landslide election victory winning 80 per cent of the seats. It’s the sixth election victory I’ve led my party to in my five years as party leader and First Minister.”

She said she had not ruled out testing the power of the Scottish Parliament to call a referendum in court, but it was not her preferred approach.

“Support for independence is rising. That is the way we win independence.”