TORY leader Ruth Davidson will this week hammer the final nail into the coffin of Better Together, when she attacks her former allies for being too weak to defend the Union.

In a pitch to disaffected Labour and LibDem voters, Davidson will send 600,000 personalised letters casting her party as the only reliable defender of the UK left at Holyrood.

By trashing her No campaign partners, Davidson hopes to overtake Labour in the race for second place in May and see the Tories become the official opposition.

Her message is aimed at Labour and LibDem supporters who discovered their sense of Union in the referendum but now feel let down by their party’s weak support for the UK.

Besides the mailshot, Davidson will also make speeches in Aberdeen and Stirling on why the Tories are best placed to hold the SNP to account in the next parliament.

Her spokesman said: “It's become clear that many people who haven't voted Conservative before who are now thinking about doing so. Many used to vote LibDem or Labour.

“They supported Scotland's decision to stay in the UK. They want the country to move on from the last few years of division, and they're looking for someone at Holyrood to back them up.

“Labour and the LibDems in Scotland aren't doing that - they have now said that their own candidates are free to support independence. All that will do is take the country backwards."

A new YouGov poll for the Scotland in Union group today finds the NHS and the economy remain at the top of voters’ priorities, with just one in ten people saying it should be a second referendum, ranking it in ninth place.

The poll of 1001 adults also found 47 per cent thought Scotland would now be worse off economically if there had been a Yes vote, compared to 27 per cent who said better off, and 20 per cent who said no real difference.

The RISE left-wing alliance yesterday organised a pro-choice rally in Glasgow and said it would extend hate crime law to cover inciting hatred against women if it had any MSPs in May.

Glasgow candidate Cat Boyd, who organised recent protests against alleged ‘pro-rape’ activist Roosh V, said the idea would be part of a new Anti-Sexism and Misogyny Bill.

This would also protect budgets for Violence Against Women groups, crack down on street harassment, make anti-misogyny education part of the school curriculum and let licensing boards take sexual assaults and harassment into account at pub and club hearings.

Boyd said: “These measures are long overdue. This isn’t just a women’s issue. Every man I speak to wants Scotland to be safe for their girlfriends, sisters, daughters and mothers.

“It's time for each and every one of us to say no to sexism."

Continuing its attack on the SNP’s education record, Labour said school budgets would fall by £774m by 2019-20 because of council cuts imposed by the Scottish Government.

MSP Iain Gray said Labour’s plan to put a penny on all rates of income tax would avoid such austerity: “Faced with the choice between using the powers of the Scottish Parliament and cuts to our children’s future, we choose to use the powers and stop the cuts.

“The First Minister said education would be the driving and defining priority of her government but instead her government is taking a scalpel to local education budgets across Scotland.

“Scotland won’t cut the gap between the richest and the rest in our classrooms by cutting the budgets for our schools by hundreds of millions of pounds.”

The SNP will today accuse Labour of bungling its key policy on housing by underestimating the likely demand for first-time buyer grants of up £3000, or £6000 per couple.

SNP MSP Kenneth Gibson said: “While Labour is indulging in fantasy economics, the SNP is getting on with the job of delivering a credible, costed and ambitious housing policy.”

Labour said the SNP had its arithmetic wrong, and the policy was robust and fully costed.

Meanwhile the Scottish LibDems said they would send fewer people to prison if elected.

The party said it wanted the presumption against short sentences of three months or less raised to a year to help reduce re-offending rates, cut the prison population and save money.

Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, the Howard League for Penal Reform, Apex Scotland, and former SNP Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill also back a year.

LibDem justice spokeswoman Alison McInnes said her party would keep prison terms for those committing serious crimes alongside "tough" community justice programmes.

“A prison place costs £37,000 a year - much more than effective community-based sentences like Community Payback Orders which cost on average £1,900.

"The robust community justice programmes we would ensure are available to judges and sheriffs also help provide stability and ensure successful rehabilitation.”

The LibDems called the Tory plan to poach the party’s supporters “misguided”.