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SCOTTISH TUC general secretary Grahame Smith was an oasis of calm yesterday amid an increasingly overheated bunfight between the Yes and No independence campaigns.
The morning saw big business-friendly First Minister Alex Salmond launch a bid for royalist votes with a claim that Elizabeth Mountbatten-Windsor would be “proud to be Queen of Scots” and that his Scottish National Party would “be proud to have her as monarch of this land.”
That was followed by a joint statement by Labour leader Ed Miliband, Tory PM David Cameron and Lib Dem deputy Nick Clegg, who said they would all rather be out “listening and talking to voters” than attending regular Wednesday prime minister’s questions.
Instead the trio will be in Scotland to tell Scots: “We want you to stay.”
The latest public tug of war came as SNP MSP Angus Robertson tried to spin an announcement due today on a timetable for new devolved finance, social and economic powers if Scottish people voted to stay within Britain as not in fact offering “new powers.”
But while the official Yes and No camps traded salvos, STUC leader Mr Smith maintained his cool.
The trade union body is poised to unveil its latest report, A Just Scotland, setting out the real core issues facing the nation’s people.
“There are strong advocates for a more socially and economically just Scotland in both the Yes and No camps, just as there are those on both sides who give scant regard to the interests of working people,” he said.
“Voting Yes does not mean that you have no concern for the cause of workers elsewhere in the UK or further afield just as voting No makes you no less of a patriot.”
Mr Smith added: “Whatever the outcome next week, Scotland and the UK will be different,” but “the trade union movement on this island will continue to work together in the interests of working people.”
Independence supporters have seized on two recent opinion polls that put the result of next Thursday’s referendum as too close to call.
However, bookies Betfair still gave a 69 per cent chance of a No vote yesterday.
