by Robert Henderson

The Scottish independence referendum – The second STV debate 2nd Sept 2014

Robert Henderson

The full debate can be found at http://player.stv.tv/programmes/yes-or-no/

Better Together panel
Douglas Alexander Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary and MP

Kezia Dugdale Scottish Labour Shadow Party Education spokesman and MSP
Ruth Davidson Leader of the Scottish Conservatives and MSP

YES Scotland panel
Nicola Sturgeon Deputy First Minister (SNP) and MSP
Elaine C Smith Convenor of Scottish Independence Convention
Patrick Harvie Co-Convener of the Scottish Green Party and MSP

Presenter Bernard Ponsonby

The debate was divided into opening and closing statements by Alexander and Sturgeon with three sections in which one representative from the Better Together and Yes camps was put up to answer questions. There was a fourth section which was the audience asking questions which could be put to any member of the two panels at the presenter’s discretion.

It was a more edifying spectacle than the Darling-Salmond shouting matches. This was largely but not wholly due to the difference in programme structure , which included much more audience participation, had six voices rather than two to be accommodated and excluded formal questioning of each other by the two sides. This removed much of the opportunity for the unseemly squabbling which had tainted the Darling-Salmond debates.

To the difference in programme structure improving matters can be added the absence of Salmond, , who was primarily responsible for the way the Darling-Salmond debates deteriorated into incoherence as the two politicians repeatedly spoke over one another. Darling is not naturally shouty and was provoked into behaving out of character by Salmond’s toxic behaviour. It is also true that Douglas Alexander was a vast improvement on Darling, both in his persona, which was relaxed and controlled, and in the quietly reasonable way he answered questions. However, his effectiveness was curtailed because the format of the show meant Alexander remained silent for much of the time.

Of the others Dugdale was nervously gabbling, Davidson attempted to give factual answers , but spoke too quickly, Elaine Smith was strident and emotional and Harvie supercilious and adolescently idealistic by turns. Listening to Sturgeon was to hear Salmond’s words slavishly repeated by someone else. She even mimicked his practice in the second Darling-Salmond debate of moving from behind her rostrum and wandering about the stage.

Although the debate was much better mannered than the Darling-Salmond encounters, it was not much more informative. There is an inherent problem with public debates where two sides are allowed to make assertions without challenge from any disinterested third party. Even where , as was the case here, the audience were able to ask a good number of questions, little is achieved because there is no sustained questioning of the speakers’ responses. Even where the speakers appeared to be giving hard facts there was no solid challenge to what they claimed. The presenter, with the amusingly incongruous English name of Bernard Ponsonby, made attempts to challenge what was being said, but these interventions rarely went anywhere and appeared more for show rather than a determined attempt to stop the speakers waffling, evading or lying. The upshot was that after the one and three quarter hours the programme ran I doubt whether the studio audience or the viewers were much the wiser about where the truth lay.

The subjects covered were social justice , benefit spending, health and social care, tuition fees, the currency, North Sea oil, the Barnett Formula, domestic violence, the nuclear deterrent, Faslane, defence, the EU and the further powers offered in the event of a NO vote. Because of the number of subjects, they were all dealt with quickly and inevitably superficially. Some questions or points from the audience went unanswered lost in the fog of politician’s waffle.

Only Alexander and Davidson made any real attempt to consistently answer questions with reference to facts. For example, Davidson had a very good point about the startlingly meagre nature of the proposed armed forces put forward in the SNPs white paper on independence. (Go into the recording at 1 hour and 15 minutes). At the point of independence the White Paper proposes that “ Scotland will have a total of 7,500 regular and 2,000 reserve personnel at the point of independence, rising to around 10,000 regulars and 3,500 reserves by the end of the five years following independence” (P237) with the possibility after ten years of 15,000 regulars and 5,000 reserves. (That is for the army navy and airforce of a country whose territory constitutes 30% of the UK).
Judged purely on the information being given by the panellists, the Better Together side was far superior, but the YES mixture of bluster, bald assertion and outright lies was backed up by aggressive audience participation by YES voters which covered the massive gaps in their responses to questions. The NO part of the audience applauded vigorously when good points were made by Better Together, but they did not exude the childlike excitement and joy seen on YES supporters’ faces , which were eerily reminiscent of the sublime inanity of the faces of the hippies in the film Easy Rider.

The extremely large elephant in the room – the interests of the rest of the UK in the referendum – went unmentioned but for one brief comment by Alexander. He pointed out that a vote for independence would give Salmond a mandate to engage in negotiations for the terms of separation, not as the YES camp claimed, a democratic mandate for anything Salmond demanded : “ The sovereign will applies here in Scotland. it can’t bind what would be the sovereign will of what would be a separate country after independence. “ Go into recording at 33 minutes.

To take one example of the rest of the UK’s ignored interests which is of immediate concern , no discussion has taken place about the position of Scottish MPs at Westminster if there is a YES vote. If the General Election takes place in 2015 but Scottish independence not until 2017 (or even later if the negotiations go badly), there would be the absurd situation of Scottish MPs and peers still sitting in Parliament at Westminster, making decisions on English matters. In addition, if Labour win the election but only with the support of Scottish MPs, a Labour Prime Minister could find himself with a majority in the Commons one day and a minority government the next. It would also mean that the terms of independence for Scottish independence would be negotiated by a PM who was arithmetically certain to have to resign after Scottish independence day and was dependent on the Scottish MPs to pass whatever terms were agreed. That would be an incentive to give far too much away to the Scots.

Looking at the three debates together , (the two Darling-Salmond debates and this one) it is astonishing that so many important questions other than the rest of the UK’s interest in the referendum have gone largely or wholly unexamined. Here are some of them:

1. The public service jobs which will go south of the border if there is a YES vote. This will be the military ones, including the Trident submarines and missiles at Faslane, plus the considerable number of public service jobs which have been exported from England to Scotland which deal with English matters such as the administration of the English welfare system.

2. The position of public sector pensions in Scotland, both those already being drawn and the pension entitlements accrued to the date of independence which have not yet begun to be drawn.

3. The condition of private sector pensions in Scotland such as those attached RBS and HBOS. These could very easily default especially if the Bank of England is no longer the lender of the last resort.

4. The very heavy reliance of the Scottish economy on taxpayer funded jobs .

5. The narrowness of the private sector of the Scottish economy, it being massively dependent on oil and gas, financial services and food and drink.

6. Immigration to Scotland.

7. Scottish Nationality.

How should the NO campaign have been conducted?

The Better Together campaign has suffered from what is always a fatal flaw: they have built their strategy around appeasement of the Scots. Appeasement can never be a strategy because the appeased always returns for more concessions. Appeasement can only ever be a tactic to buy time, something which does not apply in this context.

The policy of appeasement has meant there has been no input from those who are not Scottish and opposed to the break up of the Union. Any Unionist politician with an English accent has been treated as toxic by the NO campaign. The debate has been entirely about what is best for Scotland. Fear of being accused of being a traitor or Quisling has meant that no honest answer has been given to the challenge put by pro-independents along the lines of “Are you saying that this extremely wealthy and wondrously talented country Scotland cannot be successful as an independent country?” . This is because to suggest that Scotland is anything other than a supremely talented and amazingly wealthy country would bring exactly those accusations. Faced with that dread the NO camp has retreated to the absurd position of agreeing that Scotland is an extremely wealthy and talented country whilst saying that it should not be independent because it would lose so much economically by independence.

The fear of being labelled either a Quisling (if Scottish) or a bully (if an English Westminster politician) has allowed the YES camp in general and Salmond to make absurd statements which have gone effectively unchallenged, for example on these two major issues:

1. Salmond’s claim that Scotland has part ownership of the Pound. This is a literal nonsense. The legal position is very simple: the Pound Sterling is the English currency. Scotland gained the right to share it when they signed the Treaty of Union. If they leave the Union they forfeit that right because the Treaty and the subsequent Acts of Union will no longer operate. No one on the pro-union side has made this very obvious point.

2. Salmond’s threat to default on taking a proportionate share of the UK national debt if they do not get a currency union. This is a non-starter because Scottish independence is dependent on the Westminster Parliament repealing the Act of Union. Again, no one on the pro-union side has made this very obvious point.

3. Sterlingisation. Why on Earth did no one on the Better Together side not ask Salmond the question “Who will be Scotland’s lender of the last resort if there is Sterlingisation?” A simple question but one Salmond would not have been able to evade.

The whole business has been misguided from beginning to end. Granting an independence referendum to be decided simply by those in Scotland when it affected around 90% of the population of the UK was wrong in principle. That error was compounded by the failure to define the terms of independence before the referendum was held. Had the terms been decided before the referendum, it is very doubtful that the referendum would have resulted in a YES vote because Westminster politicians would have been forced to take account of what the electorate in England, Wales and Northern Ireland would tolerate by way of terms for Scotland to secede from the Union. For example, the three major Westminster Parties would have had to make their pledge that there would be no currency union part of the terms, because to agree to a currency union would have left them open to the anger to the electors in England, Wales and Northern Ireland at the idea that the Bank of England (and hence the UK taxpayer) would be the lender of last resort for Scotland.
If the terms had been agreed in advance, ideally these should have been put to a referendum of the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland for their acceptance. But even if that was not done, the fact that a UK general election was to be held in 2015 would have put great pressure on the politicians negotiating the deal with the Scots to not give too much away.

What can be done before the referendum by unionists? Precious little if anything in terms of promoting the positives of the UK because it is simply too late. . What the Westminster parties should not be doing is scrambling around promising an ever more potent version of DEVOMAX. That would be because it will be seen as appeasement and because the closer the DEVOMAX on offer gets to independence, the less reason there is for people to vote NO to get DEVOMAX.

What we have had since the referendum was announced has been the very small Scottish tail wagging the very large English dog. That is both absurd and a betrayal of the 90 per cent of the population who do not live in Scotland.

Telegraph

Scotland should not, and will not, survive alone

It’s a tragedy the spine of our unique nation, the England-Scotland axis, could be about to break

Jim Murphy, shadow secretary of state for international development, speaks to Better Together supporters in Edinburgh last week Photo: Getty Images

By Liam Halligan

6:45PM BST 06 Sep 2014

474 Comments

This column warned, in February and again in May, that Alex Salmond wasn’t to be under-estimated. The Scottish National Party’s canny leader has a track record of surging late to secure a close-run victory. He did it in the Scottish parliamentary elections of both 2007 and 2011.

The Union is now in grave danger. Over 300 years of history could be reversed when Scotland votes on Thursday 18 September. No-one should be surprised by the latest “shock” polls showing the pro-independence vote within spitting distance of upending the 1707 Act of Union. For some time, the momentum has been with the Yes-camp, as it has steadily come from behind. In mid-2013, 65pc of the Scottish electorate said they wanted to stay in the UK. By May this year, that figure had fallen to just over half.

Polls last week showed the No-vote with a lead of just six percentage points, excluding those expressing a preference, down from 14 percentage points a fortnight ago and 22 percentage points in early August. The UK is four distinct countries, each with its own proud identity, but one coherent nation. Cobbled together, in a form that somehow works, our combined history of achievement and success is as rich as any country on earth.

It’s a tragedy the spine of our unique nation, the England-Scotland axis, could be about to break.

With Yes and No voters seemingly entrenched, the future of the UK is now in the hands of Scotland’s “don’t knows”. A year ago, polls suggested up to a third of Scottish voters had yet to decide how they would cast their ballot. That undecided share has now fallen to just 10pc.

For numerous Scots, the choice between independence and on-going UK membership is based on instinct, an engrained sense of national identity. Such voters, whether ardent unionists or nationalists, were always clear about their choice. The remaining rump of “don’t knows”, then, those without a decisive emotional pull one way or the other, are largely pragmatic. The decision they make 11 days from now will be driven by perceptions of economic self-interest. Emotional votes having been all but cast, we’re down to the economic brass tacks.
Such wavering voters should know that independence would be an economic disaster for Scotland.
The main reason Scotland would be worse off on its own is that the existing currency union with the rest of the UK, which has operated well for centuries, protecting Scotland through world wars and global financial crises, would no longer be on offer.
For years, Scotland has benefited enormously from the broad support of the British state. Currency union has seen those living north of the border enjoying inflation and borrowing costs lower than they’d otherwise be, due to the backing of the Bank of England. Salmond, in his latest television debate with former Chancellor Alistair Darling, leader of the “Better Together” campaign, kept claiming that a Yes vote would give him a “mandate” to insist that the rest of the UK agrees to currency union with a newly-independent Scotland.
This is nonsense. How can voting to leave the union, choosing to walk away from the UK, provide a mandate for the country you’ve just left to formally back your national debt and your banks? There is absolutely no reason why Westminster should agree to a currency union with a newly- independent Scotland, as all three main parties have made clear, and numerous reasons why it should not. For a clever man, Salmond is talking rot.
The most likely outcome, at least in the short- to medium-term, is that an independent Scotland continues to use the pound, but without the support of the Bank of England or any guarantee of Scotland’s debt. While such “sterlingisation” would help maintain trade between Scotland and the rest of the UK, Edinburgh would have to pay a lot more to borrow, forcing the new Scottish government to raise taxes and cut spending more than is commonly understood.
This would be particularly true, and how, if the SNP follows through on its threat to repudiate Scotland’s share of the UK’s national debt if Westminster refuses to maintain currency union. Financial markets would then shun new debt issues, lending only at inflated rates – not only because Edinburgh will have recently walked away from other obligations but because the tax revenues of a stand-alone Scotland would be far more vulnerable to oil price swings than the UK as a whole. Again, Salmond’s current position – attempting to force the rest of the UK to underwrite Scotland’s future debts by threatening not to honour debts already existing – is economically absurd.
It is possible, of course, that Scotland could set up its own currency. That, after all, is the only route to the true independence the SNP says it wants. A separate currency, though, would be costly to Scottish business and, during the early uncertainty, the exchange rate would be extremely volatile, with capital likely to flee.
The SNP points to Norway, which has the krone. But Oslo has formidable reserves, a long record of currency management and the prospect of ever-increasing oil and gas exports. Scotland’s oil production peaked at the end of the last century, and has been falling sharply ever since. A newly-independent Scotland, with its own cobbled together currency, would actually be in a category closer to Greece, with the proviso that at least Greece has the backing of the European Central Bank.
What the SNP is loathe to admit is that Scotland gets a great economic deal from being in the UK. In 2012–13, total public spending directly benefiting Scotland was £1,257 per person according to the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, some 11.5pc higher than the average for Britain as a whole. Allocating a geographic share of North Sea revenues to Scotland saw a tax take just £789 higher per person. So, even allowing for hydrocarbons, Scots get considerably more from the Exchequer than they pay in.
The SNP’s Independence White Paper outlined numerous spending increases and tax cuts, in a bid to tempt voters, not least the pragmatic “don’t knows”, to vote yes. The package of measures, including enhanced childcare and a delayed rise in the state pension age, amounted to a £1.2bn a year giveaway in the short-term, the IFS calculated, and considerably more further ahead.
To meet these extra costs, the White Paper outlined just £500m a year in higher taxes and spending cuts, with another £235m associated with promises to promote public sector efficiency and clamp-down on tax avoidance. In other words, a newly-independent Scotland would plunge further into deficit, while anyway facing rising borrowing costs. It’s not a pretty scenario.
The danger of Scottish independence relates not just to Scotland but to the rest of the UK too. The combined balance sheets of the UK’s banks amount to a massive five times annual GDP. We have the most bloated banking sector of any major economy, making our public finances extremely vulnerable in the event of another ruinously expensive bail-out.
An independent Scotland, though, would be even more financially top-heavy – with bank balance sheets a monstrous 12 times national income. When Iceland’s banks crippled the entire country, the equivalent figure was seven times.
Would London really be able to stand idly by if Scotland’s banks imploded, given the complex web of cultural and financial links between us? Of course not. A Salmond-led government could allow Scotland’s banks to let rip, engaging in a regulatory race to the bottom with London. Again, it’s not a pretty scenario.

Telegraph

Now’s the time to stand up and be counted

Every Scot who values the Union must do their part to stop the separatists

Scots will make their choice in less than two weeks Photo: PA

By Alan Cochrane, Scottish Editor

9:29PM BST 05 Sep 2014
1031 Comments

Right this is it. There are less than two weeks to go before we Scots have to decide whether we want to stay British or take a leap in the dark with Alex Salmond.

The separatists are in a buoyant mood thanks to opinion polls that seem to suggest – suggest that’s all – that they’re in with a chance of breaking up Britain. And those who oppose them should be aware that there might well be other surveys that suggest the same or worse for the Unionist cause.

But the message this morning is that those who back the Union must not be dismayed.

We have been here before with opinion polls – and as someone who has spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of other people’s money in commissioning such things, the pollsters frequently get things wrong.

No, we shouldn’t ignore them. But don’t let them discourage those who are fighting to keep Scotland in the UK.

We have just got to get out there and tell everyone that the No Thanks campaign, the millions of Scots who don’t want to be a broke, insular little off-shoot of Europe, who value their place in the United Kingdom and its place in the world are far from finished.

And, for God’s sake, we have got to say it with a smile on our faces.
I am frankly fed up hearing whinges from those on the same side of the argument as I am, bleating about how they don’t think Better Together or David Cameron, or Ed Miliband or Nick Clegg are doing enough for the Union cause.
What they need to do is have a good look at themselves in the mirror and ask: “What are you doing to save the Union. To keep Scotland in the UK and, perhaps most of all, to wipe that smug grin off Alex Salmond’s face?”
For instance: How many doors have you knocked on to try to persuade the inhabitants that rejecting this nonsense of separation is Scotland’s best chance of a decent, successful future? We have spent decades on this constitutional merry-go-round while our children leave school not properly able to read and write and the number of people not seen when they should be in accident and emergency wards has trebled.
How many street corners have you stood on handing out Better Together leaflets that explain the huge pitfalls, if not dangers, of breaking up Britain?
How many “No Thanks”, or “UK OK” posters are you displaying in the windows in your house or in your car or in your garden or in your fields?
And no, don’t come back to me and moan that your posters have been defaced or torn down or your cars or windows have been damaged.
If they have been kick up merry hell and report it and demand that Police Scotland take some action.
If they don’t, then write to the Chief Constable and make him sit up and listen.
And then put up another poster and if that’s torn down, put up another one.
This issue is far too important for intimidation to be used as an excuse.
And also, don’t whinge to me that you can’t get enough posters out of Better Together.
If you haven’t got any, make some. For a window display all you need is some A4 paper and a felt tip pen and the ability to write NO in capital letters.
It’s true that posters can’t vote and our sensible side of the argument will never match the fury of our opponents.
But we need to make a better public display to show that we are determined not to be cowed by the nastiness of the Nats nor by their incessant lies.
All manner of big political names are on their way to Scotland in the coming days to help maintain the United Kingdom but it is the ordinary voter who will decide the issue.
We’ve all got to stand up and be counted.
It’s as simple as that.

Telegraph

Ed Miliband causes rift in Better Together campaign

The Labour leader defies appeals from Alistair Darling to stop attacking Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader

Ed Miliband refused to stop attacking the Scottish Tory leader on a independence referendum campaign visit Photo: David Rose/The Telegraph

By Alan Cochrane and Simon Johnson

6:00AM BST 05 Sep 2014
193 Comments

Ed Miliband caused a major rift in the campaign to prevent the break-up of Britain yesterday by defying appeals from Alistair Darling to stop attacking Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader.

The Labour leader was accused of orchestrating an embarrassing story in the Financial Times that quoted Ms Davidson as saying that she didn’t think David Cameron would win next year’s general election.

Although his aim was to persuade wavering Labour supporters that he could still win next year’s general election, the move infuriated leaders of the Better Together campaign where Labour and Tory politicians and activists, as well as Liberal Democrats, have been working together to win a No vote in the independence referendum on September 18.

They pointed out to Mr Miliband’s staff that the Scottish Tory leader was a key member of their effort and that she had been “taking one for the team” when she gave her opinion of Tory chances in next year’s general election during a debate in Edinburgh on Tuesday night.

And Alistair Darling, the former Labour chancellor, phoned his party leader and thought he’d got an assurance that Mr Miliband would stop making references to Ms Davidson’s view of Tory election chances next year.

But within hours of giving that undertaking Mr Miliband returned to the same subject at a Labour Party rally in Blantyre, Lanarkshire where he again seized on Ms Davidson’s comments that the current opinion polls meant that it did not appear “likely” that her party would win a second term in government. He said Ms Davidson’s admission amounted to confirmation that “David Cameron won’t be in Downing Street in just a few months”.
He went on: “Change is coming. A Labour government is coming. The Tory MPs are defecting. They are divided, they are downhearted and don’t take my word for it. Listen to the words of the Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson,” he told party supporters.
“She put it better perhaps even than I can. She said David Cameron won’t be in Downing Street in just a few months’ time. Don’t buy the SNP argument – these Tories can be beaten. A Labour government is within our grasp.”
He argued this meant Labour voters did not have to vote Yes in the September 18 referendum to rid themselves of a Conservative government they “loathe” and “social justice” could only be achieved if he became Prime Minister for the whole of the UK.
But the Scottish Tories insisted that their leader had spoken in the heat of a live debate and that what she had actually said was: “It the Tories win the general election, which isn’t looking likely by the polls but we’re trying our best …”
And they claimed that it had been “uncomradely” for Labour to use her words for partisan purposes, adding: “Ruth is working night and day for a double victory right now – to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom, and then to ensure David Cameron gets a majority across the United Kingdom in the general election next year.”
Mr Miliband denied that he had created a schism in the pro-UK Better Together campaign, which includes Labour, the Tories and Liberal Democrats, that Alex Salmond could exploit and on working with the Tories he added: “We agree with each other that it’s better for the United Kingdom to stay together but we have profound disagreements with the Conservative Party.”
A You Gov opinion poll published this week showed the No lead has shrunk from 22 to six points, with the proportion of Labour voters backing separation increasing from 18 per cent to 30 per cent over the past month.
The RMT, representing rail workers, yesterday became the first major trade union to back a Yes vote after its members voted by a margin of 1,051 to 968 to back separation. There were 365 undecided voters and Labour disaffiliated the union more than a decade ago.
Mr Miliband switched his campaign stop from Aberdeen to Lanarkshire, a traditional Labour stronghold and the birthplace of Keir Hardie, but rejected that his appearance was too little, too late to stop many of the party’s supporters defecting to Yes.
However, he admitted he felt a “huge sense of responsibility” for saving the United Kingdom, disclosing he will be staging a rally for the Union in Glasgow on Friday next week.
He will share a platform with Gordon Brown for the first time since Labour lost power and the same day Nigel Farage is hosting a rally in the same city. Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, and Lord Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, will also come north next week to try and woo Labour voters.
Mr Miliband also argued they should reject separation because the SNP was trying to “con” them into believing they backed social justice.
He said the SNP’s “Achilles’ heel” was they had no “redistributive” policies apart from cutting corporation tax for large companies by 3p in the pound at the expense of the less well-off.
But, speaking at an SNP rally in Glasgow, Mr Salmond said: “The problem with Ed Miliband is his lack of credibility on these issues. This is someone who is in bed with David Cameron, he’s in a joint alliance with the Tory party, and of course at Westminster they have pledged to continue Tory austerity policies.
“That’s why, of course, we’ve seen in the last few weeks a mass movement of people who would normally vote Labour are moving towards the Yes campaign. The ground is shifting from under Ed Miliband’s feet.”

Telegraph

Ed Miliband orders English and Welsh Labour MPs up to Scotland

The Labour leader tells his MPs to “get up there” as the SNP suffers a major public relations disaster after only two of its MPs turn up for a vote on the Bedroom Tax.

Ed Miliband has ordered his MPs to get up to Scotland with the independence referendum on a knife edge Photo: Danny Lawson/PA

By Simon Johnson, Scottish Political Editor

6:00AM BST 06 Sep 2014
37 Comments

A wave of English and Welsh Labour MPs is to hit Scotland over the next fortnight after Ed Miliband ordered them to “get up there” with the independence referendum battle on a knife edge.

Senior sources said Mr Miliband told his MPs to urgently head north of the Border at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in the Commons and “show some solidarity” with their Scottish party.

With the No lead having shrunk to only six points and traditional Labour voters expected to decide the result on September, around 100 English and Welsh MPs are expected to hit the campaign trail for the final 12 days of the battle to save Britain.

In a public relations disaster for the Nationalists’ hopes of eating further into Labour’s core support, only two of the six SNP MPs turned up at the Commons yesterday to vote on watering down the so-called Bedroom Tax.

This is despite Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon repeatedly arguing that abolition of the ‘tax’, a reduction in housing benefit for claimants with spare rooms, was a key reason that Labour voters should back independence.

Mr Miliband said the SNP no-show demonstrated how the Nationalists were trying to “con” Labour voters into believing separation would create a fairer society, pointing out that every one of his Scottish MPs was present for the vote.

Inverting a well-worn joke about the number of Scottish Tory MPs, George Galloway tweeted: “Scotland has as many pandas as SNP MPs who voted to defeat the Bedroom Tax today.”
Labour intensified the pressure on the Nationalists’ by publishing figures estimating four of their promises of increased benefits and the necessary computer payment systems would cost £750 million in the first year of separation.
Mr Miliband admitted to feeling a “huge amount of responsibility” for saving the Union during a campaign visit to Blantyre in Lanarkshire on Thursday.
A Yes vote would also devastate his chances of winning power in next year’s general election, with Labour holding 40 of the 59 Scottish seats compared to the Tories’ one.
It is understood he used the visit to hold strategy talks at which he agreed to mobilise English and Welsh MPs to hit thousands of doorsteps across Scotland.
The Labour leader relayed his demand to the PLP yesterday and the pro-UK Better Together campaign was last night compiling a list of names and deciding where to send them.
As well as convincing Labour voters they would be worse off if they left the UK, the MPs will be charged with reassuring Scots that people south of the Border do not want them to leave.
Mr Miliband has already announced a Labour rally in Glasgow next week at which he will share a platform with Gordon Brown for the first time since the party lost power in 2010. Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, and Lord Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, are also coming north.
Labour struck a blow against the Nationalists yesterday after combining with the Liberal Democrats to defeat the Tories in a Commons vote to dilute the Bedroom Tax.
MPs backed by a margin of 304 to 237 votes the Affordable Homes Bill, which would exempt the disabled and those housing benefit claimants who could not be found a smaller home. It will now be examined by a Commons committee.
But, despite making the Bedroom Tax a central issue to their campaign, four of the SNP’s six MPs did not turn up to vote. They included Angus Robertson, the party’s Westminster leader and independence campaign director.
The others who did not attend were Stewart Hosie, the Dundee East MP and the party’s Treasury spokesman, Angus MacNeil, the Western Isles MP, and Pete Wishart, the Perth and North Perthshire MP.
Mr MacNeil’s Twitter account suggested he was campaigning for a Yes vote in Shetland, while Mr Wishart later blamed the vote being early and a 20-minute flight delay.
However, the flight he said he was booked on would not have got him to Westminster for the vote even if it had been on time.
Mr Miliband said SNP MPs “could not be bothered to turn up to abolish the Bedroom Tax. It says it all about how Alex Salmond is trying to con people.
“By contrast every Scottish Labour MP was in the House of Commons voting to get rid the Bedroom Tax. It is a down payment of what Labour will deliver in government in just eight months’ time.”
Margaret Curran, Labour’s Shadow Scottish Secretary, added:“Alex Salmond’s SNP have put their campaign to break up the UK ahead of the people of Scotland.”
But Eilidh Whiteford, one of the two Nationalist MPs who turned up, said: “This vote demonstrates exactly why we need independence. Every single Scottish MP could vote against the Bedroom Tax and we would still be faced with it because we can be outvoted by Tory votes from the south.”
Better Together yesterday published an analysis showing the SNP’s promises to halt the rollout of the Personal Independence Payment, the replacement for Disability Living Allowance, keep the savings credit, abolish the Bedroom Tax and increase the carers’ allowance would cost £350 million in the first year of separation.
The Department for Work and Pensions has estimated setting up the necessary computer systems would cost £400 million, it said, bringing the total to £750 million.
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s welfare spokesman, said:“Alex Salmond needs to tell people in Scotland how his welfare promises would be paid for when independence would bring about austerity plus.”
Meanwhile, Mr Brown said he remained confident of a No vote on September 18, arguing that many of those currently considering backing independence as a “protest vote” will change their minds by polling day.
The former Prime Minister said he will lead the post-referendum Commons debate on devolving more powers to Holyrood and has written to the Speaker to make time available in the first parliamentary week after the vote.

Telegraph

Canada can show David Cameron how to rescue our United Kingdom

With a fortnight to go, the Prime Minister has to speak from the heart – and to the Scottish people

David Cameron (right) greeting Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the start of the Nato summit. Mr Harper believes a vote for Scottish independence would be a big mistake Photo: Reuters

By Fraser Nelson

6:30AM BST 05 Sep 2014

739 Comments

Almost 20 years ago, Britain looked on in amazement as it seemed that Canada was about to come apart. Just two weeks before the Quebec referendum, the “no” opinion poll lead had collapsed from 20 points to just 4 points and momentum lay with the mainly French-speaking separatists. Canada’s prime minister, Jean Chrétien, who had kept a low profile given his unpopularity with the Québécois, decided he had no choice but to intervene. The overdue panic saved the country – just. The “yes” vote was 49.4 per cent.

Now, it is Britain’s turn to be two weeks from a referendum and Canada’s turn to be aghast. Earlier this week, I met Stephen Harper, its current prime minister, who seemed unable to believe that things had come this far. Canada’s struggle involved a French-speaking province with a different religion and history from the rest of the country. But where is Britain’s cultural chasm? “Canada is a country of many, many cultures,” Harper told me, but “the idea of separating English people from Scottish people in Canada is almost inconceivable.”

From abroad, the idea of Scots being so separate from the English as to necessitate the partition of the country must seem absurd. We have the same culture, the same two main languages (English and Polish) and the same world view. If anything, England should have the bigger gripe. A century ago, The Spectator was bemoaning the influence of Scots in London (a problem that persists) but this underscored an important point. The British state is not something foreign, but something Scotland helps to mould. Our country, its achievements and the world wars won together ought to have left something indivisible.

For months, David Cameron had believed that these essential truths would be enough to win the referendum. And he has been assured by Scottish Tories (who loathe nationalists) that he is up against genial crackpots. But they seem to be rather efficient crackpots: the “no” campaign has blown a 20-point lead, it’s now down to six points and the momentum lies with the nationalists. Just as with the Quebec separatists at the start of October 1995. What the Canadians then did to save their country offers plenty of lessons for us now.

Quebec’s separatists, like Scotland’s, spent months going nowhere in the polls. They published a door-stopping magnum opus explaining what an independent state would look like; no one cared. They struggled to explain which currency they intended to use. The gaps in their argument were so vast that Chrétien thought he could leave the campaign to others. “There is no reason to be scared,” he would say. “I have the best product to offer: Canada.”

But even the best products need to be sold, especially when the electorate expects a sales pitch. In Canada, as in Britain, the “no” side lost itself in financial babble; warnings of a fiscal Armageddon persuaded voters to tune out of the whole economic argument. The more inspiring, optimistic language of Quebec’s “yes” side – articulated by the charismatic Lucien Bouchard – held a greater appeal. Chrétien later complained that his opponent’s “demagogic oratory lent him an aura that no logic or fact could penetrate”.

Not until the last three weeks of the campaign did Chrétien appreciate that he was on course for defeat. Even the Queen feared the worst (“It sounds as though the referendum may go the wrong way,” she told a Canadian radio host, who was impersonating Chrétien. “If I can help in any way, I’d be very, very happy to do so.”) The real Chrétien decided to plunge in – and if it looked desperate, then so be it. He made a high-stakes emotional appeal in the terms used so regularly by the separatists.
His speech, broadcast on nationwide television five days before the vote, used the kind of language woefully absent from Britain’s unionists. “It’s up to each of us to restate our love for Canada. To say we don’t want to lose it,” he said. “Do you really think you and your family will enjoy greater security in a separate Quebec?” He then appealed to a sense of wider identity. “Have you found one reason, one good reason, to destroy Canada? Do you really think it is worth abandoning the country we have built, and which our ancestors have left us?”
Although Chrétien hailed from Quebec he was, if anything, less popular there than Cameron is in Scotland. There is nothing stopping the Prime Minister from speaking in such terms, so close to the potential end of the country entrusted to him four years ago. But there was another last-minute tactic that the Canadians used, which proved as powerful as any speech.
A week before the referendum, Brian Tobin, Canada’s fisheries minister, called an end to a meeting he couldn’t bring himself to sit through with the fate of his country hanging in the balance. He found out about a unity rally being held in Montreal, and decided to turn it into a rally with thousands of Canadians flying in to join it. He asked every politician he knew to try to take as many people as they could along. He persuaded airlines to offer 25,000 cut-price “unity tickets” to travel to the rally; they sold out within hours.
And this is what saved the country. The “stay with us” message was delivered by more than 100,000 Canadians, which proved more potent than anything any politician said from a podium. It became harder for the separatists to argue that this vote was about defying an arrogant political elite. In Britain, similar messages have been attempted but to very little effect. David Bowie saying “Scotland, stay with us” through the medium of Kate Moss has not had the same impact. Nor has a letter signed by 200 celebrities, including Sir Paul McCartney.
Ed Miliband was in Scotland yesterday, wittering on about energy price freezes. It’s unlikely to woo back the many Labour voters he has lost to the “yes” camp. He and Cameron should be addressing their English supporters, urging them to do what they can to save the most extraordinary country the world has seen. It seems, at times, as though neither wants to disclose the true importance of September 18 and its implications for the rest of the United Kingdom. I understand that those who devise the official lists of threats facing Britain say that Scottish independence is at the top – as it would cripple the prestige, power and influence of what would remain of the United Kingdom
Quebec is no longer torn by constitutional rancour; its separatists just had their worst election result for decades. This suits Stephen Harper: Canadians turned the page, he says, and Britain can too. The debate has moved on to more pressing problems that need answering, such as terrorism in Iraq, recession, climate change and pandemics. “What would the division of a country like Canada, or a country like the United Kingdom, do to advance any of those solutions?” he told me. “There’s nothing in dividing those countries that would serve either greater global interests – or, frankly, the interests of ordinary people in these countries.”
Mr Harper will fly home after the Nato summit ends today. It’s a shame he couldn’t go north, and offer some more tips. Because Britain is 13 days away from being voted out of existence, and those trying to save it need all the help they can get.
Fraser Nelson is the Editor of ‘The Spectator’

Homes vandalised, accused of stealing jobs and an atmosphere of discriminatory intimidation: The savage racism turning Scotland into a no-go zone for the English

• Alison and Ken Porter are selling their bungalow on the outskirts of Stirling
• They moved from Yorkshire but are going to return after being ‘driven out’
• In few years their home was vandalised twice and accused of stealing jobs
• Under a fortnight until independence referendum and polls have narrowed
• Labour MP Jim Murphy pelted with eggs on Kirkcaldy High Street last week

By GUY ADAMS FOR THE DAILY MAIL
PUBLISHED: 22:14, 5 September 2014 | UPDATED: 23:45, 5 September 2014

3.8kshares

With a heavy heart and an air of resignation, Alison Porter has spent the week packing her worldly goods into brown cardboard boxes.
The 60-year-old grandmother and her husband, Ken, are selling-up and leaving the three-bedroom bungalow in a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Stirling where they moved from Yorkshire just over a decade ago.
They came hoping eventually to spend a long, happy retirement here, but are now giving up good jobs, and leaving behind friends and a home they love to return to the north of England.
Scroll down for video
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Flash-point: Labour MP Jim Murphy takes on Independence campaigners in Dundee as part of tour of Scotland

Due to leave by the end of the month, Alison and Ken will be sad to leave their tidy home behind, but feel they have little choice. They claim, after all, to have been driven out.
The Porters made headlines in Scotland this week after claiming they can no longer cope with the level of hostility that blights the daily life of someone with an English accent living north of the border.
In the past few years, they say locals have twice vandalised their home. Strangers occasionally accuse them of ‘stealing’ jobs. On several occasions, during the recent debate over Scottish independence, Alison has been called an ‘English bitch’ and worse. The atmosphere of discriminatory ‘intimidation’ is growing more pervasive as we approach this month’s finely balanced referendum, which is just 12 days away.
‘I thought this place was my home,’ Alison told reporters this week, ‘but now I don’t feel it any more.’ When I caught up with her a couple of days ago, she was still brimming with indignation.

More…

• Scotland will be more at risk of a terrorist attack if it votes for independence, Cameron warns
• ‘This isn’t about me’: Cameron vows NOT to resign if Scotland backs independence as Miliband joins the fight for the Union
• Scottish independence could trigger eurozone-style currency crisis, warn Goldman Sachs bankers
• Losing Scotland vote would be a ‘national humiliation of catastrophic proportions’, Cameron is warned in plea to save Union
• Ed Miliband tells Scots: No need to vote Yes, Labour will be in power next year!

‘The independence debate is becoming more and more about anti-Englishness,’ she said. ‘It’s got to the point where I feel afraid to talk because I have a Yorkshire accent. In any other context, you’d call it racism.’
Twice in recent years, Alison says she has had Union Jack bunting torn from her home — once during the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and again for the Royal Wedding.
Today, despite being a principled supporter of the Union who will vote against independence, she is afraid to place a ‘No’ poster on the property or in her car, for fear of sparking further attacks.
‘It’s getting like Northern Ireland, with all the hatred and sectarianism. It doesn’t matter who wins on September 18, it’s only going to get worse. And I’m not the only one who feels intimidated. There are plenty like me.’
Indeed. For with under a fortnight to go until voters answer the question ‘Should Scotland be an independent country?’ and polls showing the race has narrowed to as few as six percentage points, the debate is dominating everything in Scotland, with many families riven by the arguments. It’s not surprising the campaign is turning increasingly ugly.
MP Jim Murphy confronted by nationalists

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Many ‘No’ campaigners accuse Alex Salmond of quietly stoking the tension between the Scots and English

You see it in the ‘No’ placards being routinely defaced across the country, and read about it in newspaper reports of campaign activists having their phone lines cut and property vandalised.
I caught a whiff of this anti-English sentiment first hand, on Wednesday, when an Aberdonian taxi driver taking me to a rendezvous with canvassing ‘No’ campaigners remarked icily: ‘Will you kindly tell them to go back south of the border?’ But at least he was comparatively civil. Which can’t be said of the increasingly ugly attacks on politicians who have campaigned against Alex Salmond’s SNP.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander was, for example, called a ‘f****** liar’ on a national radio phone-in the other day.
And Labour MP Jim Murphy was pelted with eggs on Kirkcaldy High Street last week, moments after a shaven-headed man had squared up to his supporters shouting: ‘I will f****** knock you out!’
The most striking aspect of the high-profile attack on Murphy, for which a 45-year-old man has been charged with assault, was perhaps not the egg-throwing itself, but the events that led up to it.
For weeks, the Labour MP, who is on a tour of Scotland in which he speaks in town centres from atop Irn Bru crates, had been followed by mobs of ‘Yes’ campaigners seeking to intimidate onlookers for their supposedly Anglophile views.
A gang in Motherwell shouted ‘terrorist’ and pushed piles of leaflets off a nearby ‘No’ campaign stall when Murphy spoke, saying: ‘This is what happens when you side with English Tories.’
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Yes and No campaigners wait for the departure of Labour leader Ed Miliband on the Scottish independence campaign trail in Blantyre yesterday

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Scottish Labour Leader Johann Lamont joins ‘No’ activists while campaigning ahead the Scottish Referendum

In Dundee, a man with a loud-hailer called the (very Scottish) Murphy a ‘traitor’, adding: ‘Go back to London, go back to your nest of paedophiles.’ In Leith, a wine bottle was lobbed in his direction, with a cry of ‘freedom!’
Much of it was captured on film now circulating on YouTube. And on at least three occasions, Murphy says, ‘Yes’ activists went so far as to challenge him to a fight.
‘A guy in Glasgow said, “Let’s have a square go!”, which is Glaswegian vernacular for, “Let’s get it on!’’ ’ Murphy tells me.
‘In Aberdeen, a young man didn’t like my answer to his question, and said the Aberdonian version of, “Let’s have a fight.” And in Kilmarnock, a skinhead came up to me and said: “Let’s have a street brawl now!”
‘You try to laugh it off. But there’s an ugly corner of Scotland in which a kind of aggressive, intolerant nationalism lives.’
Along with almost any public figure who attempts to argue the Unionist cause, Murphy has, in recent weeks, been derided as a ‘Quisling’. This ugly term is derived from the name Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian politician who collaborated with German occupying forces during World War II.
In the argot of Scottish nationalism, it is being used with abandon, despite its vile connotations equating the English with Nazi imperialists and suggesting that Scots in favour of the Union are akin to supporters of the Holocaust.
‘Yes’ activists don’t just chant the word ‘Quisling’ either. Lewis Macdonald, a Labour MSP for north-east Scotland, has twice had his office attacked by vandals who daubed the letter ‘Q’ on his doors and windows in paint. And he’s got the photos to prove it.
‘It’s part of an co-ordinated attempt to convince people that a “Yes” vote is a vote for Scotland and a “No” vote is a vote for England,’ he says.
‘On the doorstep now, we often get called “traitors” and told to go back to England. The “Yes” campaign has created an atmosphere that’s nationalistic, anti-English, anti-democratic, and fails to respect the fact that people like me can oppose independence and still be patriots.’
Last month, MacDonald’s colleague Dame Anne Begg, the 59-year-old Labour MP for Aberdeen, put a ‘No’ placard outside her home — only for someone to creep onto her front lawn that night and tear it down.
‘Anne has to use a wheelchair, and this has made her feel unsafe,’ says a friend. ‘She has spent a lifetime in politics and has never seen anything so nasty.’
Highlights: Darling and Salmond, Scottish referendum debate

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Alex Salmond (right) and Alistair Darling (left) clashed in heated live television debates broadcast on the BBC

So indiscriminate and widespread is the vandalism of ‘No’ placards that if you drive along the A93 from Aberdeen to Balmoral, the 50-mile journey undertaken by the Queen during the past month, you will see at least 20 defaced ones lying in fields.
It’s a depressingly familiar sight for Alex Burnett, a businessman who will stand for the Conservatives in the West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine constituency at next year’s General Election.
Earlier this summer, he spent a day putting up 150 ‘No’ placards in the region. Within a day, 120 had been destroyed.
‘Someone had just gone around with a knife, cutting them to pieces,’ he says. ‘I reported it to the police, because it’s important they have statistics about this kind of thing, and they said that, funnily enough, no “Yes” posters were being defaced.’
Adding to the air of intimidation is the fact that ‘Yes’ campaigners now attend almost every public ‘No’ event, video-taping attendees and waving placards.
‘It’s deliberate intimidation, particularly the filming,’ says a ‘No’ campaign source. ‘It’s the kind of thing animal-rights nutters have done for years.’
There are, it must be said, examples of ugly behaviour on both sides. The other day, for example a 26-year-old man was prosecuted for joking on Twitter that he might ‘assassinate’ Alex Salmond.
And on Saturday, a group of ‘Yes’ campaigners were attacked while leafleting outside Heart of Midlothian’s Tynecastle stadium.
Many on the pro-independence side also argue that English politicians have routinely patronised the Scots by claiming that financial Armageddon awaits the nation if it is granted control over its own affairs. That, they say, is itself a form of racism.
But while nationalists may not have a monopoly on ugly behaviour or jingoistic language, they’ve certainly made it their trademark. Why else would the Collins English Dictionary have recently declared ‘cybernat’ one of its ‘words of the year’?
The term refers to the vast informal collective of ‘Yes’ campaigners who use online forums to smear, defame and criticise opponents. And it’s wearily familiar to prominent opponents of independence.
They include author J.K. Rowling (described as a ‘bitch’ and a ‘traitor’ on Twitter), Edinburgh-born Olympic cycling hero Sir Chris Hoy (a ‘t**t’, a ‘creep’ and a ‘bigot’) and Sir Paul McCartney, who was this week dubbed a ‘big-headed English p***k’ and worse for backing the ‘No’ campaign.
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Labour MP Jim Murphy was pelted with eggs on Kirkcaldy High Street last week, moments after a shaven-headed man had squared up to his supporters shouting: ‘I will f****** knock you out!’

The term ‘cybernat’ was coined in 2008 by the Labour peer George Foulkes, after he found himself being subjected to vile online abuse for opposing independence.
Foulkes believes there has ‘always been a fringe’ of anti-English extremists in the nationalist movement — including the Scottish National Liberation Army, an Eighties terror group. In the run-up to polling day, he’s seen them take their abuse to the streets.
‘They threaten people who have English accents. “Why don’t you go home?” or “What are you doing up here?” Often it’s said to people who have lived in Scotland for years. I was talking recently to a guy who has been up here 16 years and he’s still getting it.’
Many ‘No’ campaigners accuse Alex Salmond of quietly stoking these tensions. Both Foulkes and Jill Stephenson, an emeritus professor of history at Edinburgh University, believe the SNP leader and his colleagues often speak in anti-English ‘code’.
‘Any time you hear senior members of the SNP complain about “Westminster”, or “the Tories”, or “London”, what they are really talking about is the English. And supporters know it,’ says Stephenson.
Of course, in any racially loaded debate, careless language can have ugly consequences. Earlier this year, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown intervened in a row in his Fife constituency after English-born teenager Sasha Bell-Newman was told to ‘f*** off back to your own country’ during a classroom discussion about nationalism.
In June, Clare Lally, the mother of a disabled child who had spoken out against independence, was subjected to a smear campaign in which one of Alex Salmond’s advisers, Campbell Gunn, briefed newspapers that she was not an ordinary voter, but instead the daughter of a Labour politician with connections to the party’s London elite.
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A 26-year-old man was recently prosecuted for joking on Twitter that he might ‘assassinate’ Alex Salmond

In fact, she was no such thing, and Gunn apologised. But not before Lally had been visited at home by abusive ‘Yes’ activists.
‘It got so bad that we had to take her out of her house and put her somewhere else for a few days,’ recalls former Chancellor Alistair Darling, who is running the ‘No’ campaign. ‘They were at the door. That sort of behaviour is totally unacceptable. That’s not the sort of Scotland most people want to live in. Yet [Mr Gunn] the special adviser Alex Salmond has is still in his job.’
The upshot has been to create an atmosphere where many ‘No’ supporters, particularly in working-class areas, feel scared to express their sympathies for fear of being branded anti-Scottish.
Wider political scores are also in play. In blue-collar neighbourhoods, SNP canvassers have sought to convince floating voters that a ‘Yes’ vote offers a chance of revenge against the ‘English’ Conservatives, who presided over the decline of manufacturing during Margaret Thatcher’s time in power.
They also point out that a vote for independence may force the resignation of the Old Etonian Tory Prime Minister, David Cameron.
Alan Clarke, a veteran Labour activist who was canvassing in Aberdeen this week, tells me that he’s been repeatedly called a ‘traitor’ and an ‘English-loving b******’ on the doorstep.
‘It’s not nice, is it? They want to create an atmosphere where people feel it’s unpatriotic to vote against independence.
‘You speak to people and when they tell you they are going to vote “No” their voice often goes right down. It’s as if they are too scared to be heard taking our side.’
For all this, it must be stressed that the ‘No’ campaign retains a poll lead of between six and ten per cent. Betting markets put their chances of success at roughly 75 per cent.
Yet, as ill-feeling grows, the gap is narrowing. And there are growing fears that the poll a week on Thursday could spark similar unrest to that witnessed in Canada in 1995 during Quebec’s independence referendum.
That election also saw a wide ‘No’ poll lead narrow drastically in the run up to polling day, resulting in riots in the Canadian state after voters eventually rejected independence by a margin of just 1.2 per cent.
This week, it emerged that Scottish police will guard some polling stations to maintain law and order. And the Right Reverend John Chalmers, head of the Church of Scotland, publicly called for an end to ‘name-calling and rancour’ in the coming weeks.
But the nervousness lays bare a sad fact: as the experience of Alison Porter and so many opponents of independence shows, this divided nation now increasingly feels like an unwelcome place to be English.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2745565/Savage-racism-turning-Scotland-no-zone-English.html#ixzz3CYCDcr7f

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Telegraph

JK Rowling calls for ‘reason not ranting’ in Scottish independence debate

Harry Potter author tries to calm the heated passions of the Scottish independence referendum

JK Rowling’s intervention came as the polls narrowed with just 11 days to go before voters in Scotland decide whether to separate from the rest of the UK and become an independent country Photo: REX

By Tim Ross, Political correspondent

9:00PM BST 06 Sep 2014

JK Rowling tried to calm the heated passions of the Scottish independence referendum campaign on Saturday, urging both sides to debate with “reason not ranting”.

The Harry Potter author said that while she believed the United Kingdom should stay together, those who took the opposing view were simply “passionate” about an important issue and “not all haters”.

Rowling’s intervention came shortly before a poll put the Yes campaign in the lead for the first time ahead of the September 18 vote to decide whether Scotland should separate from the rest of the UK.

A YouGov survey for the Sunday Times found that the pro-independence campaign, led by the Scottish first minister Alex Salmond, had a two point lead of 51 per cent over the unionists’ 49 per cent.

The debate over the future of Scotland has become increasingly bitter. Rowling herself has been the target for abuse online after she donated £1 million to the Better Together campaign against independence.

On Saturday, however, she wrote on Twitter: “People before flags, answers not slogans, reason not ranting.”
Her comment came as leading Scottish footballers declared their support for a No vote in the referendum.
The players, who include former Scotland internationals Ally McCoist, Alan Hansen and Denis Law, said: “We are proud that Scotland has always stood on its own two feet but we also believe that Scotland stands taller because we are part of the United Kingdom.”
Three former British ambassadors also urge Scottish voters not to “return to the tribe” as an isolated nation on the world stage.
In an open letter, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, former Ambassador to the United Nations, Sir John Holmes, former Ambassador to France, and Sir Nigel Sheinwald, former Ambassador to the United States, warn that Nato and the EU “will not hugely welcome” an independent Scotland.
Independence will cost investment and cause “massive upheaval and risk for both Scots and all other Britons”, they say.

Telegraph

Alex Salmond accused of belittling independence concerns in fresh spat with Scotland’s top fishing body

Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, claims First Minister tried to intimidate him rather than answer a question about SNP’s view on Europe’s fishing policy

The First Minister and Bertie Armstrong have previously clashed over the impact of independence on Scottish fishermen Photo: GETTY

By Ben Riley-Smith, Scottish Political Correspondent

5:59AM BST 06 Sep 2014

39 Comments

The head of Scotland’s leading fishing body has accused Alex Salmond of trying to “belittle” his concerns about independence after the pair exchanged heated words at a meeting on Friday.

Bertie Armstrong, chief executive of Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, claimed the First Minister attempted to “intimidate” him rather than answer questions about the SNP’s changed stance to Europe’s fishing policy.

Mr Armstrong said Mr Salmond attacked the way he previously raised concerns about the independence debate and undermined his leadership by suggesting past fishing representatives would have acted differently.

Mr Armstrong told The Telegraph he was angered by Mr Salmond’s personalised response, saying: “It isn’t helpful for giving the voting public the answers they need. I’m not in the least bit intimidated by it, but it takes the argument of facts no further forward”.

Various independent sources at the event backed up Mr Armstrong’s interpretation, with one describing the “robust” exchange” as “rough and tumble” and another agreeing Mr Salmond had “played the man and not the ball”.

The claims follow previous allegations that the SNP has used intimidation to silence concerns about independence – always vehemently denied by the party – with David Cameron saying last week businesses felt scared to speak out.

A Better Together spokesman said the exchange was typical of how Mr Salmond “tries to close down debate and avoid questions”, while a spokesman for the First Minister said he “enjoyed” hearing the views of all present, including Mr Armstrong.
The exchange came as Mr Salmond met fisherman at the Peterhead Fish Market – in his old Banff and Buchan constituency, which he represented in Westminster for more than two decades – and announced that the industry would be a priority after independence.
“Only with independence will Scotland’s fishing industry benefit from greater influence, better representation, a fairer deal in funding, and quota protection,” Mr Salmond said, predicting the industry would “flourish” once free from Westminster.
During a subsequent question and answer session Mr Armstrong, who heads up a body representing more than 500 Scottish vessels, asked about Mr Salmond’s views on the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
The SNP’s 2007 Scottish election manifesto promised to work for “withdrawal” from the CFP – whose quotas frustrate many British fishermen – but the party’s White Paper has dropped the pledge, calling instead for reform.
When asked about the change in position, Mr Salmond allegedly criticised Mr Armstrong for talking to the media about SNP intimidation in the past instead of addressing the point.
“He attempted to belittle the question by saying fishermen’s leaders in the past hadn’t been intimidated,” Mr Armstong claimed, saying he felt the First Minister was inferring there was “somehow a lack of backbone” in his leadership of SFF.
Mr Armstrong said the meeting had been an “opportunity” to address concerns about independence but was instead “a political rally in support of the Yes vote with questions about fishing largely unanswered”.
He added: “We are now, two weeks ahead of the referendum, at the point where we are definitely going to get any more substantive argument about fact. It’s now straight into emotion or an ideological argument rather than an argument about fact.”
The row follows a previous clash between the pair, with Mr Armstrong sending an “information-seeking” letter after a speech by the First Minister, who wrote back dismissing the “ridiculous interpretation” of his comments.
Last month the SFF warned that independence could mean Scottish fishermen getting a worse deal from Europe because the largest EU countries “win on the big issues”.
A Better Together spokesman said: “This is typical of the way Alex Salmond tries to close down debate and avoid questions about the consequences of independence. Why can’t Alex Salmond just be honest with people about the risks of separation?”

A spokesperson for Mr Salmond said: “The First Minister enjoyed the opportunity to speak to members of the fishing industry about the massive benefits independence will deliver for the sector, and to hear the views of those present, including Mr Armstrong, who were all free to put questions to him.”

Telegraph

Construction boss attacks Scottish independence

Anthony Rush describes as a “disgusting travesty” the campaign for leaving the UK.

Anthony Rush has attacked the campaign for Scottish independence Photo: Danny Lawson/PA

By Daily Telegraph Reporter

11:00PM BST 05 Sep 2014

The SNP’s campaign for independence is a “disgusting travesty” that relies on erecting false barriers and splitting families, an eminent businessman has warned.

Anthony Rush, a fellow of the Institute of Directors, claimed that a small but “influential elitist clique” of fewer than 200 senior nationalists are driving the campaign for separation.

In a letter to Derek Mackay, the Scottish Local Government Minister, he said they are driven by the loss of Scottish prestige that followed the collapse of RBS.

Rejecting the SNP’s claim that a formal currency union would be in the interests of the rest of the UK, he said a separate Scotland could not run its own affairs while “enjoying the comfort of being sheltered from future economic mistakes by the Bank of England.”

The businessman recalled meeting Alex Salmond in 2007 but described as a “dishonest illusion” SNP claims that Scotland could be a wealthy independent country by following Norway’s example.

Mr Rush has worked for 48 years in the construction industry, latterly opening his own consultancy for settling major disputes and reorganising companies, and also served on one of Renfrewshire Council’s local area committees.

He decided to write to Mr Mackay in response to an open letter he received from the minister urging him to vote for separation, publishing his reply on his website.
In a message to his fellow Scots, Mr Rush said last night: “Use your heads and realise that the SNP are exaggerating the benefits which will come from independence. It is my grandchildren and their peers who will suffer if there is a Yes vote.”

Telegraph

David Cameron should not quit if he loses Scotland on September 18, says Jim Murphy

Jim Murphy says: ‘I don’t think anyone has to resign – not David Cameron, not Ed Miliband, not Alex Salmond.’

“All politicians are temporary. This result is permanent. This is more important than David Cameron,” says Jim Murphy Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

By Christopher Hope, and James Kirkup

10:00PM BST 05 Sep 2014

David Cameron should not resign if Scots vote for independence in a fortnight’s time, a senior Labour shadow Cabinet minister has said.

There has been widespread speculation that the Prime Minister will resign if Scotland votes to leave the United Kingdom on September 18.

However Jim Murphy, the shadow International Development secretary, said this was not necessary – because of the magnitude of the decision by the Scots.

He said: “I don’t think anyone has to resign – not David Cameron, not Ed Miliband, not Alex Salmond. This is bigger than that, more important than that.

“All politicians are temporary. This result is permanent. This is more important than David Cameron. Of course I want rid of David Cameron, but that’s next year’s debate.”

Millions of Scots will be asked to answer yes or no to the question: “Should Scotland be an independent country?” in this month’s referendum.

Mr Murphy this week restarted his campaign tour of Scotland, with 100 public meetings in 100 towns and villages to put the case for voting No in the referendum.
He had suspended it after coming under fire from Nationalist demonstrators. In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, he said, what ever the outcome, some sort of reconciliation was required between pro and anti-unionists north of the Border.
He said: “Win lose or draw, we all have to accept the result. If the Yes side wins, we are not going to go around campaigning to reverse the decision.
“Scottish politics is the most personally abusive of any politics on this island. People know each other very well, and we are a cantankerous, argumentative lot.”
He added: “There is a dark corner of Scotland that is home to a very aggressive nationalism, nationalism that has no room for doubt and little room for reason.”
Despite a narrowing in the polls, Mr Murphy said that Scots were still on course to vote to stay in the Union.
He said: “We are six points ahead. In a general election, that’s a landslide. But there’s a different threshold being applied here. This is a two horse race but the team that’s second is doing a lap of honour.”
He called for more passion in the No campaign, and not rely on economic arguments like an independent Scotland losing the pound to win the argument.
He said: “We are all a combination of logic and emotion. We know that we have to win hearts as well as heads.”
In contrast, he said, the Yes campaign had “emotion cemented into it.”
Mr Murphy suggested that it might be Scottish women who save the Union because they were more likely to vote No.
He said: “Women are more likely to ask how they’re going to pay the bills afterwards. There is very masculine energy about Scottish nationalism. That can be a bit offputting to women.”
But he warned that if Scots vote to stay in the union Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, would soon be seeking another referendum.
He said: “They will bounce back. After a few days, they will pick themselves up, dust themselves down and get campaigning again.”

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/scottish-independence-500m-needed-to-join-nato-1-3533185

Scottish independence: £500m needed to join Nato

Aircraft

demonstration on the final day of the summit at the Celtic Manor Resort. Picture: PA

• by DAVID MADDOX

Published on the06September
2014
00:22

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AN INDEPENDENT Scotland will not be allowed into Nato unless the Scottish Government agrees to reverse its defence cut pledge and raise spending by at least £500 million.
The warning by the military alliance was issued as its 28 members agreed to a minimum defence budget of 2 per cent of GDP at its summit in Newport, Wales.
The Scottish Government has said that defence spending would stand at £2.5 billion, or 1.7 per cent of GDP, after a Yes vote.
In response, the SNP claimed “Westminster’s own defence spending is due to fall below the 2 per cent figure”, and described Conservative criticism of its plans as “patently absurd”.
• Get the latest referendum news, opinion and analysis from across Scotland and beyond on our new Scottish Independence website
The decision to up spending by Nato members came as Prime Minister David Cameron said the events of this week in Iraq and Ukraine spoke of “a very dangerous and insecure world”, and claimed this underlined why Scotland must remain in the UK.
The UK government also said a pledge by Mr Cameron yesterday to bring the Royal Navy’s second new aircraft carrier The Prince of Wales into full use – instead of being mothballed as planned – will protect defence jobs at Rosyth in Fife.
The “Wales Pledge” on spending, signed at the Nato summit, is intended to strengthen the commitment of member states on defence spending at a time when the West is facing threats from the Islamic State and a stand-off with Russia.
At present, Britain, the United States, Estonia and Greece are the only countries to meet the new target but the other members agreed to increase their spending to bring it to 2 per cent.
However, the Scottish Conservatives said the Scottish Government’s own figures showed that it proposes to spend £500m “too little” on defence if voters back independence.
The SNP plans laid out in its white paper show a commitment to spend £2.5bn per year. The Scottish Government has said Scotland would have a GDP of £148bn, meaning it would spend 1.7 per cent of GDP.
The white paper also specifically states that the Scottish Government would “reduce defence and security spending to £2.5bn per year” which would release more than half a billion pounds to help pay for pledges like maintaining free personal care, funding triple-lock pension plans, reducing energy bills and paying for free childcare.
Asked how this would affect an independent Scotland’s application, a Nato spokesman told The Scotsman: “All member states have signed up to the 2 per cent pledge; therefore any theoretical new member state would have to abide with that.”
Earlier, a senior Nato source also warned that a separate Scotland could not “simply walk into” the organisation.
He said: “Joining Nato isn’t just a question of applying and walking in. The bottom line is that you need every single Nato member to say Yes for you to join and even if one doesn’t, you’re stuck.”
At a news conference at the summit, Mr Cameron was asked about how independence would affect his pledges on defence made this week.
In response, he accused Alex Salmond of promoting “total confusion” on whether or not an independent Scotland would join Nato, the Europe Union or what currency it would use.
“It is for him to answer questions about what would happen,” Mr Cameron said.
He said in the last two weeks of the campaign, he would be taking to Scotland a “very loud and clear message, which is: We want you to stay. We care passionately about our family of nations”.
He went on: “I don’t think anyone can be in any doubt that we live in a very dangerous and insecure world and I would have thought one of the strongest arguments that those of us who want to see the UK stay together can make is, in that dangerous and insecure world, with terrorist and other threats, isn’t it better to be part of the United Kingdom, that has a top-five defence budget?
“That has some of the best security and intelligence services anywhere in the world, that is part of every single alliance that really matters in the world in terms of Nato, the G8, the G20, the EU, a permanent member of the security council of the UN.
“To

have all those networks and abilities to work with allies to keep us safe, isn’t it better to have those things than separate yourself from them?”
Reacting to the claimed shortfall in defence spending Scotland would face, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson said: “The SNP’s stated aim is to disarm a nuclear member of Nato – despite the rules of entry requiring every member to sign up to Nato’s first-strike nuclear policy. Now, we see an independent Scotland’s military budget would be £500m short.
“This is yet more proof that Alex Salmond is utterly clueless when it comes to defence.”
However, the SNP dismissed the attack on its plans as “a boomerang attack by the Tories”.
SNP defence spokesman Angus Robertson said: “This is a boomerang attack for two reasons. First, Westminster’s own defence spending is due to fall below the 2 per cent figure, so on their logic the UK will be expelled from Nato, which is patently absurd.
“The UK’s own recently retired ambassador to Nato, Dame Mariot Leslie, has also said that an independent, non-nuclear Scotland will be welcomed as a member of the alliance.”
He went on: ““The Scottish Government is committed to the European Nato average on defence spending, some 1.7 per cent of GDP – and the SNP is, of course, committed to getting rid of Trident nuclear weapons and increasing conventional defence such as maritime patrol aircraft which the UK government scrapped.”
He added: “It was Westminster’s decision to wage a disastrous and illegal war in Iraq – backed to the hilt by the Tories as well as Labour in 2003 – which has made the world a much more dangerous place, the effects of which are still with us.”

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/gordon-brown-no-equals-more-powers-for-holyrood-1-3533170

Gordon Brown: ‘No’ equals more powers for Holyrood

Gordon Brown called for a union for the 21st century. Picture: Reuters

• by SCOTT MACNAB

Published on the06September
2014
00:00

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SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE: Gordon Brown has spelled out the new powers which he says Scotland is guaranteed after a No vote, claiming that the UK is being “irreversibly transformed” by the spread of devolution.
The former prime minister revealed yesterday he has formally requested Westminster allocates time for debate immediately after the referendum, to get a timetable for implementing more Holyrood powers.
All three of the main Westminster parties have issued their own proposals on greater devolution, but have faced criticism over the lack of clarity about exactly what Scots can expect.
• Get the latest referendum news, opinion and analysis from across Scotland and beyond on our new Scottish Independence website
But Mr Brown said a “new Union” of the 21st century was being forged which spelled the end of the “all powerful” centralised Westminster system, in a keynote speech in London yesterday.
New powers over income tax and welfare, as well as more economic and employment controls, will be handed to Holyrood, the former premier added.
It came as Labour sought to regain the initiative in the referendum campaign yesterday, with Scottish party leader Johann Lamont hitting the campaign trail in Nicola Sturgeon’s Glasgow Southside constituency – prompting a Twitter spat between the pair.
Labour has been on the back foot in recent days after a YouGov poll found a big shift in the party’s traditional vote towards independence which left the rival Yes and No camps almost neck and neck.
Mr Brown insisted yesterday that a No vote does not mean no change. “A No vote will instead usher in further constitutional reforms,” he said.
“Now no-one can ignore the basic fact that the United Kingdom is being irreversibly transformed into the new Union of the 21st century.”
But Mr Brown insisted that, as well as the additional tax-raising powers coming to Holyrood in the Scotland Act next year, there are a number of areas where the parties already agree on even more devolution after a No vote.
This includes more power over income tax, as well as attendance allowance payments to disabled OAPs and housing benefit which could prevent another bedroom tax-style measure being imposed on Scotland by London.
Each of the parties also have plans for more economic and employment powers, which would be “substantial”, Mr Brown added.
The former Labour leader said he felt a “responsibility” to make sure the demand for more powers was met “as soon as possible.” He added: “I will personally seek to lead a debate on the floor of the House of Commons in the first week that Westminster returns after the referendum, with the specific aim of confirming the public and well-understood agreement on the process and timetable for further devolution.
“I have already written to the Speaker of the House of Commons asking him to recognise the significance of this matter by setting aside time in the first days back for me to put the case.
“This way, there can be doubt of the strength of the UK Parliament’s commitment to change and no going back on the promise of further legislation.”
Ms Lamont was accompanied by party activists on a visit to Govan in Ms Sturgeon’s constituency, amid claims that large swathes of Labour voters are backing Yes and could help deliver independence.
Ms Lamont pointed to YouGov polling which shows even more SNP voters from 2011 plan to reject independence.
She also fired off a cheeky message to Ms Sturgeon on Twitter: “Had a great time in your constituency this morning.”
But Ms Sturgeon hit back: “I’ve seen Yes canvass results in ur constituency, so know why u don’t want to be there.”

http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/snp-slammed-over-mps-no-show-at-bedroom-tax-vote-1-3532875

SNP slammed over MPs no-show at bedroom tax vote

Defence Spokesman Angus Robertson was one of four SNP MPs absent from the vote. Picture: Ian Rutherford

• by TOM PETERKIN

Updated on the05September
2014
23:56

Published 05/09/2014 17:38

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The SNP has been accused of putting its plan to end the UK before the welfare of the Scottish people after just two of its MPs turned up to vote against Tory bedroom tax plans at ­Westminster yesterday.
Two of the SNP’s six House of Commons MPs voted for a Lib Dem-sponsored bill to overturn key aspects of the bedroom tax. Two-thirds of the SNP’s Westminster group did not show up despite the party placing its opposition to the controversial welfare reform at the heart of its independence argument.
• Get the latest referendum news, opinion and analysis from across Scotland and beyond on our new Scottish Independence website
Labour and the Lib Dems united to defeat the Conservatives in the Commons and supported sweeping new exemptions to the controversial benefit reform.
Labour

helped force Andrew George’s Affordable Homes Bill through a second reading vote by 306 to 231, winning a majority of 75 and ensuring that the proposed legislation cleared its first parliamentary hurdle.
Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling were among the Labour politicians to support the proposed legislation, which will overturn many aspects of the controversial bedroom tax.
On the SNP benches, only the Angus SNP MP Mike Weir and Dr Eilidh Whiteford, MP for Banff and Buchan, voted for the proposals.
Absent were Angus Brendan MacNeil, Angus Robertson, Stewart Hosie and Pete Wishart.
On

Twitter, Mr Wishart claimed a delayed flight and the debate’s early finish was to blame for his absence. On social media, Mr Wishart offered to show his boarding card to journalists, saying the 11:55am shuttle was delayed by 20 minutes.
His critics responded by pointing out that all Scottish Labour MPs turned up and suggested the SNP MSP was cutting it fine to catch an 11:55am plane when parliament winds up at 2:30pm on a Friday.
Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont said: “Far from standing up for Scotland, the SNP have stayed at home and let Scotland down.”
Mr George’s proposal included measures to exclude social housing tenants from the policy until they receive a “reasonable offer” of alternative accommodation with the “correct number of bedrooms”.
SNP work and pensions spokesperson Dr Whiteford said: “This vote demonstrates exactly why we need independence. This was a defeat for the UK government but it doesn’t end the bedroom tax.
“Every single Scottish MP could vote against the bedroom tax and we would still be faced with it because we can be outvoted by Tory votes from the south.”

Telegraph

Claims of North Sea fracking boom a ‘gross exaggeration’, says leading geology professor

David Macdonald, Professor of Petroleum Geology at Aberdeen University, urges voters not to take seriously latest report by N-56 think tank

Scots will make their choice in less than two weeks Photo: PA

By Ben Riley-Smith, Scottish Political Correspondent

4:59AM BST 05 Sep 2014
140 Comments

Claims that North Sea fracking could help bring Scotland £600 billion of oil revenues are a “gross exaggeration” and should not be taken seriously by voters, one of the country’s leading geologists has said.

David Macdonald, Professor of Petroleum Geology at Aberdeen University, told the Daily Telegraph a report from the think tank N-56 heralding the future of underwater fracking was “largely nonsense”.

Prof Macdonald said the analysis by N-56 – founded by Dan Macdonald, SNP donor and Yes Scotland advisory board member – underplays the extortionate cost of removing oil via fracking from the sea bed.

The think-tank’s claim that Scotland would see a “new black gold bonanza” was also dismissed by a second academic, Dr Gordon Hughes, Prof of Economics at the University of Edinburgh, who called it “pure guesswork”.

Last month, N-56’s claim that oil reserves could be more than six times Office of Budget Responsibility estimates was heavily criticised by Sir Ian Wood, accepted by both sides of the debate as the leading industry expert.

Sir Ian variously called that original report “stupid”, “quite unrealistic”, “utter pie in the sky” and “completely and utterly wrong and misleading”, adding that it convinced him to speak out about Nationalists oil claims.

In a new report, published yesterday, N-56 said underwater fracking could “propel Scotland towards the top of the global league table in terms of oil and gas production”.
The new technique – unveiled at the Unconventional Resources and Technology conference in Denver, Colorado, last month – could almost double the amount of recoverable oil from the industry’s high end estimate of 24 billion barrels to 45 billion barrels, it was claimed.
The extra reserves could yield an additional wholesale value of £1 trillion to £2 trillion depending on oil prices, according to N56, potentially helping earn the Scottish Government up to £665 billion in tax revenues by 2040.
However, two Scottish academics went public with their criticism of the report yesterday and warned voters off taking the claims at face value.
“It’s a gross exaggeration … It should not be taken at all seriously,” Prof Macdonald said about the N-56 report, adding that claims Scotland could get up to £600 billion in tax revenue was “attractive” but “largely nonsense”.
The costs of fracking thousands of metres underwater is ten times more expensive than onshore fracking, Prof Macdonald said, adding that the report also failed to appreciate the impact previous drilling may have had on North Sea oil reserves.
Making a similar point, Dr Hughes said: “There is a reason that the oil and gas described by N-56 does not appear on most estimates of our remaining reserves – at current prices and with existing technology, it does not make economic sense to extract it.”
“It is pure guesswork to predict what developments will be economic 20 or 50 years from now. … In the face of such uncertainty, no responsible government would place any weight on the prospect of fiscal revenues from such extraction.”
Tom Greatrex, Scottish Labour’s Shadow Energy Minister, said: “Prof. Hughes’ verdict is a damning blow to their credibility on the issue of the North Sea. The truth is that oil revenues are, by definition, declining and, by record, volatile.”
Fergus Ewing, SNP energy spokesman, said: “This new report shows the strong possibilities in offshore unconventional and hard to reach oil and gas, and shows that when combined with existing reserves Scotland could have almost double the oil and gas reserves we previously thought.

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