Alex Salmond cast London as the “dark star” destabilising the country’s economy last night as he revealed he has a “feeling in his bones” that Scots will back independence.
The first minister claimed that an independent Scotland would redress the imbalance created by the UK capital by shining out as a progressive “northern light”.
However, he was forced to deny that a “yes” vote in September would turn Edinburgh into the “new London” for people living in the north and north-east.
Speaking in the heart of the “dark star”, a stone’s throw from Westminster at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the SNP leader claimed the referendum on September 18 would be the first time in history that Scots would be “truly democratically sovereign”.
Urging voters to seize the opportunity, he said in a speech: “Because on that moment – and I believe from then on – Scotland’s future will be in Scotland’s hands.”
The “democratic deficit” of having Conservative governments which were not supported by most Scots was “not a passing inconvenience, but a debilitating disconnect at the very heart of politics”, he added.
And it was claimed that the creation of a Scottish Parliament had not resolved the issue as some had hoped, but instead “dramatised” it.
In a message intended to reassure an audience largely from south of the border, the first minister said that after the independence vote “there would be a northern light to redress the influence of the dark star – rebalancing the economic centre of gravity of these islands”.
However, an audience member from Caithness later turned the theme back on the SNP leader, asking: “I want to know what you’re actually going to do to stop Edinburgh being the ‘dark star’ of an independent Scotland, and how we’re not just replacing London for Edinburgh?”
Mr Salmond responded by highlighting that the north-east was actually the most prosperous part of Scotland, and that the Highland population was rising rapidly.
“We’re not going to recreate the dark star. If the SNP were to govern as you thought in terms of regional disparity, we wouldn’t have won the election in 2011 in every single area of Scotland. North, south, east, west,” he said. In his confident and optimistic final remarks last night, Mr Salmond said: “I believe we’re going to win. I’ve got that feeling in my bones.
“But I also know, absolute with certainty, that we will fight that campaign in such a way that we’ll look back and say that campaign itself made the country a better, more engaged, progressive place.”