Scotland on Sunday Debate on the Union article.

Mctosh45 · Scotland on Sunday Debate on the Union article.

Two thirds majority for independence!

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=101282007

Scotland on Sunday debate on The Union
MURDO MACLEOD Scotland on Sunday Political Correspondent

Read a transcript of Wendy Alexander's speech

Read a transcript of Nicola Sturgeon's speech

TWO of Scotland’s top political brains have clashed at Scotland on Sunday’s debate on the future of the Union.

With the Scottish parliament election fewer than five months away, the SNP's Holyrood leader Nicola Sturgeon and the former Labour minister Wendy Alexander began the run-up to what is likely to be Scotland’s most crucial election in a generation.

For Alexander it was a question of even if the current settlement was broken, there are other ways to fix it, as the establishment of the Scottish parliament had shown. She said: "Devolution is a process. So if you favour more powers that is fine – you can still be a committed unionist. And if the last decade teaches us anything – it is that you do not need to tear up the Union to reform it."

She added that, with Scotland needing to take its place in tackling the big problems of the world, such as globalisation, the environment, and international security, Scots should not divert their energies into pondering their own constitutional future, and the SNP needed to choose which small independent country it wanted to emulate.

She said: "Norway has high taxes, in Ireland you pay 40 euros when you go to see a doctor. It's Swedish public services or low Irish taxes because you can’t choose both.

For Nicola Sturgeon, the issue was one of giving Scotland the flexibility to do things its own way.
She said: "With independence we can choose policies that will make our economy more competitive and grow faster. We could, for example, cut corporation tax like Ireland did with such outstanding success. Without independence, our hands are tied.

"Does anyone really believe that Scotland somehow, uniquely, can't do the things that these other small, independent nations manage perfectly well?"

Sturgeon was challenged by the audience on how the SNP expected to make up the shortfall in the nation’s electricity supplies if they were committed to making do without nuclear power stations. She replied that she hoped to make Scotland a world centre for renewables.

Her party was also challenged on what the point of independence would be if many powers would remain with the EU, how Scotland could manage its currency and the monarchy.

Meanwhile, Alexander was challenged over the Iraq war, with one questioner saying that the UK’s foreign policy had made him "ashamed to be British".

Of the roughly 100 members of the public who turned out to the debate, slightly fewer than two-thirds said at the end of the debate that they wanted to end the Union, the rest – with the exception of three don’t knows – plumped for the status quo. cheers