Ross McEwan, the outgoing chief executive of the banking group, said that the move would happen but the number of jobs would still be retained at its Gogarburn base providing people still wanted to work in Scotland. The shock prediction comes as Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon continues with her desperate bid to drag Scotland out of the Union over Brexit.

Mr McEwan told an editors' dinner last night: "I think you would if you talk to the Scottish Government they would want us to take the plaque and move it to England because the balance sheet size of this thing would just be too big for Scotland - 730-odd billion, you can't support it.

"So that would be the change, same as it was four years ago." 

Asked what the change of Headquarters base would mean he said: "Not much at all. As long as we can get the good talent in Edinburgh this would stay one of our major centres.

"As long as the economy stayed competitive here and we could get talented people and they wanted to work here, not much changes."

Asked if this would still be the case in the event of a no deal Brexit, McEwan said: "It's up to the Scottish people, it's your call, you've got to make the call on these things and we'll just to have to prepare ourselves for that."

While McEwan said that jobs would be retained at Gogarburn, there is likely to be concern among professional services firms that some of their current work with the bank would move south.

Asked what he had not achieved in his time as chief executive, McEwan said the biggest task was "around our customer service, particularly to our retail and small business customers".

He said that the bank had done a lot of work on that but there was still quite a way to go to improve the perception of the bank.