In 2003, Mr Salmond told me Scotland would be independent in 20 years. After that debate I doubt it By STEPHEN GLOVER. Daily Mail

 During the 2003 Scottish elections I found myself walking around the back streets of Dundee with Alex Salmond. He was not then leader of the Scottish Nationalists, though he had been, and would soon be again. I remember him as an amiable and rumpled figure.

At one of our pit-stops he said something that chilled my blood. He told me that in 20 years, if not before, Scotland would be an independent country. He asserted this so calmly and confidently that it was hard to disbelieve him.

I wonder whether Tuesday evening’s debate with Alistair Darling will mark the point when Mr Salmond and the rest of the world began to realise that his prophecy of an independent Scotland has been confounded, at any rate for a generation.

And I also wonder whether the debate might remind Labour that Mr Darling (still only 60) is a considerable but often underrated politician who in most respects stands head and shoulders above the party’s present leader, Ed Miliband.

 The debate had been billed as a contest between the wily, charming Mr Salmond, and the boring, bank managerish Mr Darling. Some supporters of the Union had had so many qualms about the former Chancellor that there had been private talk of replacing him with the more pugnacious John Reid, a Cabinet minister in the Blair administration.

In the event, though, it was the supposedly plodding Mr Darling who easily won the day. An instant Guardian/ICM poll after the debate gave him victory by 56 per cent to 44 per cent. It is hard to find anyone even in the Yes camp who thinks their man did well.

By the way, let me say how outrageous it was that the contest could not be viewed south of the border except online, and even then the picture was often interrupted. These two men were discussing the future of our country, Britain, and yet most citizens of the United Kingdom were excluded from the debate.

Read more here:

Further reading here:

We are the underdogs now, admits Salmond: Support for independence slumps after his TV mauling, Daily Mail

Plan B or not Plan B: Salmond rejects the question,  The Scotsman

Scottish Independence, a Vehicle for Alex Salmond's Grandiose Ego ?

First Minister Alex Salmond warns that without the pound an independent Scotland would refuse to take its share of UK debt and claims debate was a success for Yes camp.