Will Cameron’s ‘10 days to save the Union’ message work?

David Cameron continues his anti-SNP campaign today, launching what the Times calls his ‘strongest attack so far’ on a Labour-SNP government. The Prime Minister tells the paper that there are ‘ten days to save the United Kingdom’, which is an echo of Tony Blair’s ‘24 hours to save the NHS’ and William Hague’s less successful ‘last chance to save the pound’.

The Conservatives are increasingly talking about the SNP and spending money on billboards featuring a thieving Alex Salmond because they say this message is cutting through in marginal constituencies.

But the SNP’s retort is that even if people are bringing the SNP up on the doorstep, it may make little difference to how they vote. Just because someone has noticed something, doesn’t mean they’ll place it above the economy, immigration and the NHS as a reason to vote the way they do.

And in any case, the Tories may find in the long term that their campaign to ‘save the union’ makes it much more difficult to do so by stirring up nationalism on both sides of the border.