Meeting of the Parliament 27 November 2013
If that is the First Minister being positive, heaven help us when he decides to turn negative. His speech was entirely in tune with his world view, which is rooted entirely in negativity and grievance. All of his political life, he has wanted to free Scotland from the United Kingdom, and that is his view of what the United Kingdom wants to do to Scotland.
I understand that the First Minister has started quoting Nehru on national identity. I wish that before he published the white paper he had taken on another quote from Nehru:
“a theory must be tempered with reality.”
Without that, his paper becomes more of a wish list and he appears more like Nero.
There is a case for independence that, although I do not believe in it, can at least claim to be coherent. It has been put by the First Minister’s former deputy, Jim Sillars, and involves Scotland having its own currency and not being a member of the European Union. Anyone who truly believes the First Minister’s mantra that the best people to govern Scotland are those who live and work here would follow that view, and Alex Salmond certainly used to when he called sterling a “millstone round Scotland’s neck.” Now he is claiming ownership of that millstone and demanding the right to wear it still.
The First Minister claims that his white paper is full of detail, but I have to tell him that there is an enormous difference between a lot of detail and a lot of words. Far from being “tempered with reality”, the white paper is assertion-rich. On the pound, for example, it says on page 85:
“Scotland will continue to use the pound.”
Members: Hear, hear. [Interruption.]