Salmond vows Westminster won’t decide Scotland’s future
The SNP leader has warned David Cameron that the Scottish people will decide their own destiny as independence vote looms.
Scotland’s First Minister Alex Salmond has insisted that the future of the country will not be determined by Westminster.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) leader used his speech on the closing day of the party’s annual conference in Inverness to send the UK Government a stark message.
Mr Salmond said: “The days of Westminster politicians telling Scotland what to do or what to think are over. The Scottish people will set the agenda for the future.
“No politician, and certainly no London politician, will determine the future of the Scottish nation.
“The Prime Minister should hear this loud and clear.
“The people of Scotland – the sovereign people of Scotland – are now in the driving seat.”
The conference is the SNP’s first since the party’s landslide victory in May’s Holyrood elections, when the Nationalists became the first ever party to secure an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament.
Mr Salmond said that win had given his party the “greatest ever mandate of the devolution era”, meaning a referendum will be held on Scottish independence – something they failed to do when the party formed a minority administration.
No date for such a vote has yet been set, but Nationalists have pledged it will take place in the second half of the parliament’s five-year term.
Mr Salmond’s speech marked the start of the SNP’s campaign ahead of that referendum, as he told activists: “This party will campaign full square for independence in the coming referendum.”
Opponents have seized on the fact that Mr Salmond has made clear that the Scottish Government is willing to include a second option of “devo-max” – increased powers for Holyrood short of full independence – on the referendum ballot paper.
Labour’s Scottish leader Iain Gray claimed the inclusion of a ‘devo-max’ option in the independence referendum was “an admission by the Nationalists that devolution does work, most Scots support it, and that the SNP are now trying to move away from separation”.