Farage goes to Scotland: just what the No camp doesn’t need

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, has denied he is being "incendiary" by going to Scotland today to tell Scottish voters to vote No next Thursday. But the fear is Farage’s intervention north of the border could make the increasingly nasty independence debate even nastier.

Farage, who is used to receiving public abuse, said on Radio 4’s Today programme: “I have absolutely no intention of being incendiary at all. I am going to make a point [that] this referendum has been called an independence referendum... but if you actually look at it, it's not. Mr Salmond... is saying let's sign up for the EU state.”

Farage is also arguing that if the Scots are to be offered more powers under the 11th hour ‘Devo max’ proposal now on offer in a bid to stop the Yes vote then the English should enjoy similar rights. “I am fully in favour of a federal United Kingdom, we need a new constitutional settlement,” he said.

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It’s the No camp that is most concerned about Farage’s appearance in Glasgow today. Just when they have something to celebrate – the latest poll from YouGov shows No regaining the lead over Yes, by 52 per cent to 48 per cent, after the weekend’s big scare when Yes moved ahead for the first time – up pops the kind of public school-educated southerner the average independent-minded Scot has no wish to be lectured to by. Farage could do the No camp far more damage than good.

There will be more polls over the weekend, and going right up to the eve of the referendum, but the new YouGov survey - coming on the back of Wednesday’s Survation poll which gave No a six-point-lead over Yes – seems to supports the theory that the Yes campaign might have peaked too soon.

Certainly the Yes camp seems to have lost its confident voice in the past 24 hours or so: now it is mainly crying “foul”.

Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish Nationalists, is particularly aggrieved by the BBC’s report this week about the Royal Bank of Scotland making contingency plans to move its headquarters from Scotland to London in the event of a Yes vote – just the sort of story to put a waverer off voting Yes.

The row culminated in Salmond accusing Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, of heckling him at a press conference. Robinson was later targeted by a so-called ‘CyberNat’. Someone calling himself IAG80 tweeted to the BBC man: “Hang ur head in shame. That was shocking & sickening ‘reporting’. Simply disgusting. You'll get what's coming.”

Robinson tweeted back asking what it was that was “coming” to him. He got no reply, but a number of supportive tweets urging him to stand up to bullying.

Speaking up for Salmond, Elaine C Smith, the Scottish actress from TV comedy Rab C Nesbitt, told BBC1’s [2]This Week it was not just "the politics of fear - it's the politics of terror".

Speaking for the No camp, Alistair Darling, leader of the Better Together campaign, accused Salmond on Newsnight of running an offensive and divisive campaign. “What I am more worried about now in a way I wasn't six months ago is how we bring together people. When I hear Alex Salmond going on about Team Scotland - the undertone of that is that "those who are not with me" are doing something wrong. That's offensive stuff.”

But all this nastiness is nothing compared with what is coming down on David Cameron’s head as referendum day approaches.

The PM is now accused by politicians of all stripes of having made a strategic error when he refused to allow ‘Devo max’ on the referendum ballot paper as an alternative to full independence. It is generally accepted across the political spectrum that the majority of Scots would have gone for that and we would not now be facing a consitutional crisis.

Instead, promises of extra tax and spending powers for the Scots are being cobbled together without a clear idea of where it might all lead.

Farage is not the only one calling for more powers for the English as well as the Scots. Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is due to make a speech today calling for more powers for English "city states" such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, to match the tax-raising powers conceded to Scotland. Ed Miliband makes a similar call in the New Statesman.

Meanwhile, many Tory MPs, including John Redwood, are furious with Cameron for signing up to ‘Devo max’ without consulting his own party at Westminster. There are increasing mutterings in Westminster that Cameron will not survive this, whether Scotland votes Yes or No next Thursday.