A new
opinion poll gives the Unionist campaign a six-point lead as the Bank of
England's Governor warns a separate Scotland faces billions of pounds of
spending cuts or tax rises
By Simon
Johnson, Steven Swinford, Peter Dominiczak and Christopher Hope
Alex
Salmond’s independence bandwagon has been stalled as a new opinion poll gave
the Unionist campaign a six-point lead and the grim economic reality of leaving
the UK started to emerge.
At the end
of a day of political drama, a survey of 1,000 Scots was published showing 53
per cent rejected independence and 47 per cent were in favour when undecided
voters were excluded.
The
six-point margin was the same that pollster Survation recorded two months ago,
prompting an immediate jump in the value of the pound on the money markets and
suggesting the Yes campaign may have peaked too early with a week to go until
the referendum.
The Unionist
fight back will gain momentum on Thursday as 100 English and Welsh Labour MPs
arrive in Glasgow, before fanning out across Scotland to join an unprecedented
ground campaign.
Alex
Salmond's blasé attitude to the consequences of an independent Scotland
reneging on its debts is breathtaking: “What will they do?” he reportedly
asked. “Invade?” Photo: EPA
The survey
was published in the Daily Record as Mr Salmond yesterday endured his own
"Black Wednesday", with some of Scotland's biggest companies warning
against the dangers of separation and the Bank of England indicating he faces a
£145 billion hole in his plans to keep the pound.
It emerged
that both Lloyds and RBS have contingency plans to leave Scotland in the event
of a Yes vote.
Lloyds has
confirmed that it will move its headquarters to London, while Treasury sources
said that RBS have “similar plans”.
Standard
Life, the pensions giant, revealed it is planning to move part of its business
to England to protect its customers in the event of an independence vote, while
BP and Shell backed expert predictions that oil will have all but run out by
2050.
It also
emerged nearly $2 billion (£1.24 billion) has flowed out of UK equity funds in
the last two months amid heightened uncertainty over what separation would mean
for the economy.
Speaking in
Edinburgh, an emotional David Cameron appeared to close to tears at one point
as he appealed to Labour voters not to back independence just to give the
“effing Tories a kicking”.
Ed Miliband echoed this message in the key battleground of Glasgow and
disclosed he had cleared his diary to stay in Scotland as the pro-UK Better
Together campaign made a desperate attempt to reverse the Nationalists’
momentum.
Alex Salmond
denied the poll showed the separatists had peaked too early, saying the
Unionists would throw “the kitchen sink and most of the living room” at the
campaign over the next week but Scots were no longer receptive to their
“scaremongering.”
The pro-UK
Better Together campaign predicted the contest would still “go right down to
the wire” but Danny Alexander compared Mr Salmond's economic problems with
Black Wednesday, when Britain crashed out of the European Exchange Rate
Mechanism in 1990 sending interest rates soaring.
The Chief
Secretary to the Treasury said: “This is the day the economic case for
separation died and reality that independence will cost jobs, investment, and
growth dawned.”
With the
race tightening and just a week to go, observers had widely expected the poll
to show a lead for the Yes campaign as Survation has consistently put Yes
support higher than other pollsters.
But the
survey of 1,000 Scots showed 47.6 per cent plan to vote No, with 42.4 per cent
backing separation and the remaining 10 per cent undecided.
It was
conducted between Friday and yesterday, after previous opinion polls disclosed
there had been a surge in support for Yes and the contest was on a knife edge.
The poll
showed Scottish men are almost exactly evenly split on independence, with 46.4
per cent planning to vote Yes and 46.8 per cent voting No. However, 48.5 per
cent of women intend to reject separation and only 38.6 per cent support it.
It showed
more Scots aged below 35 and over 55 opposed separation than supported it, with
the intervening age group backing independence.
The poll was
published as Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, said that an
independent Scotland could have to build up to huge cash reserves to ensure it
is in a position to bail out its banks.
Mr Salmond
has suggested Scotland keep using the pound unilaterally, in the same way
countries like Panama adopt the US dollar, after the three UK parties rejected
a eurozone-style deal to share the pound.
But Mr
Carney said that, in the absence of the Bank of England, Scotland would have to
build up huge reserves of sterling to stand behind its large banking sector.
He warned
that Mr Salmond would have to slash public spending or raise taxes to plug the
gap and prevent major financial institutions from leaving Scotland and basing
themselves elsewhere.
In an
appearance before the Treasury select committee, Mr Carney suggested that
Scotland will inherit £15 billion in cash reserves on leaving the Union.
However, he said that would fall far short of the typical levels needed by
other countries that have adopted foreign currencies.
He said that
countries aspiring to join the Eurozone require reserves worth 25 per cent of
their GDP, while countries with more "sophisticated" financial
systems such as Hong Kong have cash reserves worth 110 per cent of their GDP.
Scotland
would need to raise up to £145 billion to bring its reserve levels in line with
those of Hong Kong.
Earlier in
the day, Standard Life, which employs 5,000 people in Scotland but has 90 per
cent of its customers south of the Border, said it would examine moving its
pensions, savings and investment operations to England.
The company,
which has been headquartered in Edinburgh for its 189 – year history, said it
needed to ensure its customers were subject to UK tax law and regulation.
BP formally
came out against Scottish independence and Bob Dudley, its chief executive,
backed warnings by Sir Ian Wood, the oil industry’s most eminent businessman,
that Alex Salmond’s economic case for separation relies on highly inflated estimates
for North Sea tax revenue.
Ben van
Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, also backed the assessment published by Sir
Ian, who warned that Scottish voters were using their hearts rather than their
heads in the independence debate and urged them to re-examine the economic
case.
However, Mr
Salmond insisted Sir Ian was wrong and Standard Life was bluffing.
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