Hamish Macdonell

Alex Salmond is impaling himself on problems of his own making

When the independence debate finally started to rumble last year, most people thought it would be the big issues which would dominate as we approached polling day – defence, foreign affairs, welfare, the future of the monarchy and so on.

But here we are, just eight months out from the 18 September referendum and there are two very different issues dominating the agenda – childcare and student tuition fees. On both of them, moreover, Alex Salmond has managed to get himself impaled on problems of his own making.

First, childcare: when he launched the White Paper on Independence back in November, the First Minister promised a ‘revolution’ in childcare if Scotland became independent. He pledged that Scottish two-year-olds would get 600 hours of childcare in the first year of independence, increasing to 1,140 hours for all youngsters from one to school age by the end of the second parliament.

But it did not take long for his opponents to realise that Salmond has complete control over childcare for Scotland at the moment.

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