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. John Swinney, the Scottish Finance Minister, argued that the UK Government would have to “respect” the Nationalists’ pledge to keep the pound if they win next September’s vote. His comments confirm publicly the Daily Telegraph’s disclosure that Alex Salmond was planning to claim that “winner takes all” in next September’s referendum. We reported how senior civil servants believed the First Minister would insist that victory in the referendum would give him a mandate to implement his entire White Paper on separation, being published next week. In the hope of increasing support for independence, which has stagnated at around 30 per cent, we said he could claim that Westminster has a democratic responsibility to agree to his proposals, including a currency union to share the pound. Speaking to BBC Scotland, Mr Swinney claimed this was the logical conclusion of Westminster agreeing to respect the outcome of the referendum in a deal signed by David Cameron and Alex Salmond. But the Prime Minister’s most senior adviser on Scots law will today call on the SNP to be “honest” that they cannot promise to deliver their blueprint for independence if they win the referendum. Lord Wallace of Tankerness, the Advocate General for Scotland, will argue that next week’s Scottish Government White Paper on separation will be “speculative” in nature. Mr Cameron and Mr Salmond signed the Edinburgh Agreement last year to settle the referendum procedures and respect the result, but the UK Government has repeatedly insisted that this had no impact on the ‘divorce’ negotiations following a ‘yes’ vote. This week Carwyn Jones, the Welsh First Minister, suggested the Welsh, English and Northern Irish would each have a veto over a currency union and made clear his opposition to the plan. But Mr Swinney said last night: “Clearly the people of Scotland will be given the proposition that sterling will be the currency of Scotland. “The UK Government has signed up to respect the outcome of the referendum so we would expect them to respect the outcome of the referendum and therefore to respect the currency position that we have set out as part of that process.” 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.” Although he will say it would be unreasonable to expect SNP ministers to have a “crystal ball” about what a separate Scotland would look like, he said the test for them is the “frankness” with which they admit the uncertainties that exist. He will say that he hopes “they are honest” but will argue that the manner in which SNP ministers are approaching issues of currency, Europe and defence is adding to the “level of uncertainty”. The former Deputy First Minister will say the 1997 referendum that created the Scottish Parliament was different because it was conducted openly by a Government with a large majority in the Commons. He will say the SNP’s White Paper has been drawn up under conditions of “strictest secrecy” by an administration at Holyrood that cannot promise that its contents will be delivered. Mr Salmond has repeatedly refused to state what his ‘Plan B’ currency would be if the remainder of the UK rejects a deal to share sterling. On Wednesday night Mr Jones demanded a say in any such agreement and said he was “not convinced” that it would “work from the Welsh perspective.” telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10466211/SNP-claims-yes-vote-forces-English-to-share-the-pound.html
Posted on: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 10:00:47 +0000
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