Better Together campaign launched

Former Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling told the Scots that they face the “biggest decision ever taken” when he launched the campaign to keep Scotland in the UK.

The former Cabinet Minister unveiled the Better Together campaign team in Edinburgh, as Scots ‘prepare’ to vote in the referendum in 2014. He was joined by Labour leader Johann Lamont, Conservative leader Ruth Davidson and Liberal Democrat chief Willie Rennie in the city’s Napier University.

“The most important political campaign of my life has started, and I had to get involved,” Mr Darling said. “This decision will be the biggest we have ever taken in Scotland. It is
not about saving the Union, it is about providing the best possible future for the generations of Scots who will follow us.”

The former Chancellor said the referendum was looming in the most turbulent and uncertain times across the globe. “It is a big and difficult world, and independence is an inadequate response. Think of all the big questions that the world is challenged by and then think — think really hard — about to which of those questions Scottish independence is the answer. In a world of complicated and difficult questions, Scotland is being offered a simple slogan.”

He warned that if Scots vote ‘yes’ to independ-ence in two years’ time, the decision will be “irrevocable. If we decide to leave the UK, there will be no way back. We can’t give our children a one-way ticket to a deeply uncertain destination.”

Mr Darling also criticised the SNP’s failure to do “basic homework” on the impact of leaving the UK on issues such as the plan for Scotland to keep the pound. This has prompted claims that it would leave Scotland’s monetary policy at the mercy of the Bank of England — a foreign country’s central bank. “The most basic inquiries expose a fundamental truth: the SNP don’t know what independence would mean for Scotland.”