Scaremongering and smearing: just another day in the Scottish referendum campaign.

I was surprised to discover this morning that Gordon Brown last night suggested the Scottish education system should be abolished and replaced by a new pan-UK curriculum and examination system.

This would indeed be a bold thing to recommend three months before the independence referendum. A surprise too and the sort of thing you’d expect to be all over the news today if it weren’t, of course, the case that the press is irrevocably biased against the nationalists and determined to bury anything that might embarrass Unionists.

Still, Gordon said it. He must have. Otherwise why would Kenny Gibson MSP say Gordon Brown “has endorsed the idea of a UK-wide education system – which could only mean taking powers away from Scotland and giving them back to Westminster”?

Needless to say, nationalist websites and twitterers have slavishly followed the party line and, of course, that’s their prerogative.

There are many things to say about Kenny Gibson’s statement – released as a party press release – but the simplest thing to say is that it’s a lie.