Scottish independence: 'Yes campaign every bit as dodgy as Iraq dossier', Daily Telegraph

By Andrew Gilligan

One of the key themes of the Yes independence campaign – I saw it scrawled on a No poster in Edinburgh only last night – is that a “free Scotland” will no longer be tricked into illegal wars based on lies.

But as the BBC reporter who first exposed those lies, I believe that Scotland is being led over a cliff by a dossier every bit as dodgy as the one that took us into Iraq.

Like the whole of Britain in 2003, Scotland in 2014 is being asked to fix a problem that does not exist. Back then, it was an imaginary threat from Iraq. Now, it is an imaginary threat to the NHS, 45 minutes from destruction if you vote No.

Back then, it was the supposed “clash of civilisations” between Islam and the West. Now, it is a supposed “fundamental conflict of social values” between two nations, England and Scotland – whose social values, all surveys show, are extremely similar.

And just as in 2003, Scotland is also being asked to tackle another problem that is real and does exist – but in a way that will only make that problem worse, for itself, and for all of us. Back then, we were told that invading Iraq would protect us from international terrorism. In fact, of course, it gave international terrorism a boost beyond al-Qaeda’s wildest hopes and dreams.

Now, Scots are told that independence will protect them from global capitalism. They are told that a new international border at Gretna will form a magic shield against the City, the Tories, and the cuts.

In fact, after a Yes vote the City, the Tories, and the architects of the cuts would have more power over Scotland, not less.

Because what is offered by Alex Salmond and the Yes campaign is not independence. It is sharing a currency, whether formally or informally, with England.

Scotland’s central bank would be in London. All the key levers of Scotland’s economic policy – interest rates, borrowing and spending – would be controlled not in Edinburgh, but by a UK government that Scots no longer had any role in choosing; a government much more likely than before to be Tory, without Scottish votes.

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Deutsch bank chief warns of dangers of Yes vote. The Scotsman

SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE: The financial and economic arguments against Scottish independence are “overwhelming”, a leading bank warned as it compared a Yes vote to the mistakes which led to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In one of the starkest warnings yet issued by a financial institution, the chief economist at Deutsch Bank David Folkerts-Landau said voters and politicians had failed to grasp the potential severity of the negative consequences of separation.

He said he found it “incomprehensible” that Scots were even contemplating withdrawal from the United Kingdom, and pointed to the “recessions, higher taxes, lower public spending and higher interest rates” that had afflicted nations seen as potentially heading for the eurozone exit.

But the Scottish Government accused him of failing to take into account Scotland’s “strong fiscal position”, and said it would start life as an independent nation “from stronger economic foundations than any other nation in history”.

In a highly-critical analysis of the prospects of independence, Mr Folkerts-Landau said: “Everyone has the right to self-determination and to exercise his or her democratic rights.

“But there are times when fundamental political decisions have negative consequences far beyond what voters and politicians could have imagined. We feel that we are on the threshold of one such moment.

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Brian Wilson: Secession leads to a dangerous end, The Scotsman

THE offer of a package of powers for Holyrood should have happened earlier, but at least it has happened now, writes Brian Wilson

AS, MERCIFULLY, the finishing line approaches, there is one phrase which stands out in my over-loaded recollection of the Scottish referendum campaign. It came from Pope Francis and he was not speaking specifically about Scotland, so much as division of countries and peoples in general.

The critical distinction he drew was between “independence for emancipation and independence for secession”. In a more intellectually demanding age, every nuance of the debate would have been measured against that yardstick. What exactly are we being asked to liberate ourselves from, and at what human cost, risk and precedent?

I was reminded yet again of the Pope Francis test when Alex Salmond, chief architect of division, this week drew an astonishing analogy between people registering for the Scottish referendum and “the scenes in South Africa…when people queued up to vote in the first free elections”. Here, surely, we were listening to a man operating at the delusory limits of self-aggrandisement.

To claim comparison between the suffering of South Africa’s black population, on the basis of institutionalised racism, and the position of Scotland within the UK is ludicrous and offensive. Disappointing though it may be to his followers, Mr Salmond is not the Biko of Banff but a shrewd populist who is adept at pressing buttons which would be best left unpressed and at driving wedges where none need exist.

Having wrapped himself in the flag that used to belong to all of us, Salmond wants us to take sides between “Team Scotland” and “Team Westminster”. Within that not very subtle code lies the insidious folly of what he is promoting. Everyone who follows him is, by definition, in “Team Scotland” while dissenters are branded as supporters of a hostile, alien entity.

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