Scotland will take to the polling stations tomorrow. As the independence referendum approaches, the leaders of the campaigns on both sides are having their final say.
Polls continue to be extremely close, only just giving a No vote the edge. Three new polls were published last night: one by Opinium for the Daily Telegraph, another by ICM for the Scotsman and a third by Survation for the Daily Mail. They all came out with 52 per cent for No and 48 per cent for Yes. However, they exclude undecided voters.
Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond has written an open letter to Scottish voters, urging them to “wake up on the first day of a better country”.
Here is his message, as reported by the Scotsman:
In these final hours of this historic campaign I want to speak directly to every person in this country who is weighing up the arguments they have heard.
I have no doubt people in Scotland will look past the increasingly desperate and absurd scare stories being generated daily from Downing Street.
Those have no place in a sensible debate.
Give a gift subscription to the New Statesman this Christmas, or treat yourself from just £49So in these last days of the greatest campaign Scotland has ever seen, I want to ask you to take a step back from the arguments of politicians and the blizzard of statistics.
For every expert on one side, there is an expert on the other.
For every scare tactic, there is a message of hope, opportunity and possibility.
The opportunity for our Parliament to gain real job creating powers, the ability to protect our treasured National Health Service and the building of a renewed relationship of respect and equality with our friends and neighbours in the rest of these Islands.
But for all that, the talking is nearly done.
The campaigns will have had their say.
What’s left is just us – the people who live and work here.
The only people with a vote. The people who matter.
The people who for a few precious hours during polling day hold sovereignty, power, authority in their hands.
It’s the greatest most empowering moment any of us will ever have.
Scotland’s future – our country in our hands.
What to do? Only each of us knows that.
For my part, I ask only this.
Make this decision with a clear head and a clear conscience.
Know that by voting ‘Yes’, what we take into our hands is a responsibility like no other- the responsibility to work together to make Scotland the nation it can be.
That will require maturity, wisdom, engagement and energy- and it will come not from the usual sources of parties and politicians but from you -the people who have transformed this moment from another political debate into a wonderful celebration of people power.
Does every Country make mistakes? Yes.
Are there challenges for Scotland to overcome? Undoubtedly.
But my question is this – who better to meet those challenges on behalf of our nation than us?
We must trust ourselves.
Trust each other.
In Scotland we’ve always had the wealth, the resources and the talent.
We know that with independence we would immediately be in the top twenty of the richest countries in the world.
But what has emerged in this campaign is something very new.
It has changed Scotland forever. I have met it in every community I have been in the last weeks.
Confidence.
Belief.
Empowerment.
An understanding that if we work hard Scotland can be a global success story.
A beacon of economic growth and a champion of social justice.
That’s who we are as a nation.
We are the land of Adam Smith who said that no society can flourish and be happy if too many of its people do not benefit from its wealth.
We are the land of Robert Burns who loved Scotland dearly and also celebrated humanity the world o’er.
It’s what we can be.
Its why this opportunity is truly historic.
Women and men all over Scotland looking in the mirror and knowing the moment has come.
Our choice, our opportunity, our time.
Wake up on Friday morning to the first day of a better country.
Wake up knowing you did this – you made it happen.
This vote isn’t about me, it isn’t about the SNP, the Labour Party or the Tories.
It’s about you. Your family. Your hopes. Your ambitions.
It’s about taking your country’s future into your hands.
Don’t let this opportunity slip through our fingers.
Don’t let them tell us we can’t.
Let’s do this.
It’s a clear pitch to undecided voters.
The First Minister was also on the BBC’s Today programme this morning, giving his final pitch. He spoke passionately about the debate, calling it “the most amazing thing”. He observed:
I never thought in my political life that I would see people queuing up patiently to register to vote. . . Some people who’d not been on the political register since the poll tax probably. People who couldn’t give a stuff about politicians, including me probably, the BBC, metropolitan leaders. . . [We should] capture some of that enthusiasm, some of that positivity.
However, it was what he lacked in precision that he made up for in enthusiasm. Asked yet again about his plan for Scotland’s currency, still unclear on the eve of the poll, Salmond insisted, fairly vaguely, that, “our proposal is a common sense agreement on our current currency”. He didn’t confront the scenario in which Scotland would not receive central bank backing.
Yet he confirmed that, in the event of a Yes vote, “I will say the No and the Yes campaigns are over, we have Team Scotland”. His idea of Team Scotland is to invite figures from across the political spectrum, and both sides of the independence campaign to negotiate in “comradely friendship” for a “best possible settlement for Scotland”.
However, the leader of the Better Together campaign, Alistair Darling, talking on the same programme this morning, called the idea of Team Scotland “deeply offensive”. He was condemning the idea that it was “unpatriotic” not to support the Yes campaign. “He is not Team Scotland”.
Darling also criticised the tone in which some of the Yes campaign has been carried out, saying, “unfortunately there are some who have stepped over the mark,” and some had found independence activists “quite frightening”. He gave the example of Yes activists demonstrating outside the BBC.
On devolving further powers to Scotland, Darling said the new powers were announced “months ago”. He said what has been decided in the last stages of the campaign is that there will be a “timetable” for the main parties to sort out their “minor differences” over the details of devolution. On the idea of a “neverendum” following a slim No win, Darling insisted, “no, I think both sides are actually agreed – because I said it and Alex Salmond said it – that this is to settle the matter for a generation.”
He added: “We have all built the UK together and we have benefited from that strength. . . I think it would be a tragedy if that relationship was broken.”
Now both campaigns can do little but watch how their final pitches will affect the undecided 8 per cent (approximately) of voters when they come to make up their minds tomorrow.
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