SNP ministers were last night accused of “treating Scots like fools” after claiming the English would be forced to share the pound if they win the independence referendum. A Better Together spokesman said: “It seems that all sense has finally left the building. The notion that every negotiation Alex Salmond would enter into would result in him getting everything he wanted is not just naive, it is laughable. If their long delayed White Paper rests on arguments like this, then it wont be worth the paper it has been expensively written on. They are treating the people of Scotland like fools.” A Scotland Office spokesman said:It looks like John Swinney has hit the panic button on currency. As the Welsh First Minister made clear this week, a yes vote by Scotland cannot force a currency union on everyone else in the UK. Everyone would need to agree and that looks highly unlikely. That is why Mr Swinney needs to tell us what his Plan B is on currency. Lord Wallace will today state that the terms of separation, including the currency, would actually depend on negotiations with the remainder of the UK and many other nations. In a speech to Aberdeen University, he will say that the “real challenge” to the Scottish Government is the extent to which the White paper will “own up” to the uncertainties that would follow a ‘yes’ vote. “By its very nature, it deals with matters which are speculative and not within the capacity of the Scottish Government to deliver. That is because it depends on the position taken by other bodies whose own interests will be affected,” he will say, citing the UK Government, Nato and the EU. ‘So there is uncertainty. Leaving a 300-year-old union is always going to involve something of a leap into the unknown.”
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 10:01:15 +0000
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