Lib Dems switch on the sunshine – and attack ‘sinister’ Yes tactics

The Lib Dems have just launched the final leg of their campaign against Scottish independence, which is a poster van with Charles Kennedy’s head emblazoned across it and three of the United Kingdom’s greatest achievements: the NHS, the pound and the BBC.

It’s part of their ‘sunshine strategy’ to talk up the benefits of the Union in the final few days, and the four Lib Dems who launched this van – Danny Alexander, Charles Kennedy, Jo Swinson and Willie Rennie – argued that they had been saying all sorts of lovely sunshiny things about the United Kingdom all along, but they just weren’t as well-reported as all the warnings.

It’s interesting that they’ve chosen those three iconic British achievements, because each of them is also in one way or another rather controversial in this campaign. Today the NHS, which the SNP has been using as part of its narrative on Scotland breaking away from Tory England where everything is being privatised and benefits are cut, has become very topical indeed, with a leak to the BBC that the NHS in Scotland is facing a £400 million funding gap – something Salmond has vehemently denied and something Danny Alexander was keen to point out when I interviewed him this morning: