Salmond Says Cameron `Right to Be Nervous’ as Yes Gains Momentum

By Svenja O’Donnell  

Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond said Prime Minister David Cameron is right to be nervous about Scotland’s pro-independence referendum as support for the so-called Yes campaign is increasing.
With two and a half weeks to go before the Sept. 18 vote and postal voting already under way, Salmond said in an interview with Sky News today that the pro-independence campaign is gaining momentum and “a huge number of Labour voters are supporting Yes.”
“The Yes support is rising in
this campaign,” Salmond said. “We’re still the underdogs, we’ve still got a distance to travel, but if we’re making the Prime Minister nervous, I suspect we’re doing something right.”
Polls have narrowed since Salmond’s strong performance in a televised debate against former Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling on Aug. 25. While support for Scotland to remain part of the U.K. still dominates, enough voters remain undecided to cause a potential upset. Cameron told the Scottish Daily Mail yesterday that while he is confident Scotland will vote no to independence, he was “nervous because it matters so much.”
A Survation poll for the Scottish Daily Mail found that 47 percent of respondents would vote Yes in the referendum, four points more than in a similar survey on Aug. 9. The poll also showed 12 percent of respondents likely to vote still don’t know how they will cast their ballot.

Eggs Hurled

Referendum campaigning has been marred by accusations that nationalists have deliberately targeted pro-union events. Labour lawmaker and No campaigner Jim Murphy suspended his speaking tour last week after nationalist supporters pelted him with eggs and threatened him.
“This isn’t your run of the mill opposition heckling,” Murphy told Sky News today. “It’s coordinated. It’s sinister.”
Salmond dismissed allegations that such attacks were deliberately orchestrated by the Yes campaign as “ridiculous” and condemned egg-throwing or intimidation from any side.
“This is the greatest democratic engagement that Scotland has ever seen,” Salmond said. “Hundreds of thousands of people who have never been interested in politics before are now engaged in the most empowering debate in political history.”
Salmond’s claim that independence would be the best route for Scotland to preserve its National Health Service benefits found support with Allyson Pollock, a professor of public health research and policy at Queen Mary University in London. Pollock told Scotland’s Sunday Herald newspaper that NHS reforms in England could result in reduced funding in Scotland and that independence was the “clearest” way of protecting that.