A very interesting interview with Il Tartanissimo in the Times today in which Salmond accepts, quite candidly, that independence isn’t happening any time soon:
“The centre of gravity in Scottish politics currently is clearly not independence,” he admitted. “You must campaign for what is good for Scotland as well as campaigning for independence.”
A cynic – not that there are any of those around here – might argue that there’s a contradiction in that second sentence but, in this instance, a cynic would be unfair on Eck. It’s really quite rare to come across a politician being quite this candid about what is, after all, supposed to be his party’s reason for being.
Nor did this alarming outbreak of common sense stop there. Salmond wants to renew the argument, correctly in my view, for fiscal autonomy, since, as he puts it:
“It is really important, in my view, to be able to say to people how we can change the circumstances and increase revenue as well as decreasing expenditure.
“It is my job to come up with some answers, along with others.
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