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It would be ‘extremely difficult, if not impossible’ for an independent Scotland to join the European Union, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said on British television. Alex Salmond, the leader of the Scottish National Party, said that if an independent Scotland was not allowed to use the pound, it would cost the rest of the United Kingdom £500 million in transaction costs per year, and Scotland would refuse its share of the national debt. Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, warned that uncertainty produced by a referendum on EU membership would mean that businesses held off from making investment. The Unite union called off a strike at the Faslane and Coulport naval bases in the Clyde. The introduction of a new NHS anonymised data-sharing scheme was delayed by six months. Students elected Edward Snowden, the fugitive leaker of American state secrets, as rector of Glasgow University.
Inflation fell from 2 per cent to 1.9 per cent in January, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, the first time it had been below the Bank of England’s target of 2 per cent since November 2009; but measured by the Retail Prices Index, it rose from 2.7 per cent to 2.8. Poundland announced its flotation on the Stock Exchange, with an expected value of £700 million. Unemployment fell by 125,000. The Court of Appeal upheld the right of judges to sentence offenders to imprisonment for the rest of their lives, which the European Court of Human Rights had ruled breached a prisoner’s human rights. A British jihadi was suspected of driving a lorry-bomb into a jail in Aleppo. Dave Lee Travis, the former disc jockey, who had sold his house to fund his defence, was acquitted on a dozen charges of indecent assault, dating from the 1970s.
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