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Scotland and the Union

And, indeed, Scotstoun; perhaps my hon. Friend will forgive me if I focus on Govan for a second. Local industry there is so reliant on the massive number of jobs in the shipbuilding industry secured by the Government, that people there will want an answer to the questions my hon. Friend put. It is not good enough to be told that if they wrap themselves in the flag and say they love Scotland, everything will be fine. That is an insult to the people of Scotland. I have been in Scotland taking part in the election campaign, and when I saw the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire here today I wondered why he has not been there doing the same. Now we know. They dare not let him. His speech was a gaffe-strewn disaster, a one-man Sheffield rally. The message has not got to him that he is not supposed to be gloating or cracking open champagne bottles before even one vote is cast. He is showing ugly arrogance taking the people of Scotland for granted, and the smirk will be wiped from his party’s face when the people of Scotland go to the polls in 48 hours. The mask slipped from the Scottish National party during the hon. Gentleman’s speech. It has been sweetness and light during the campaign. Mr. Salmond, or rather the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond)—he is standing in Gordon, he is standing in the list, and he wants to be an MP in Westminster, so I can be forgiven for forgetting what title to refer to him by from time to time—has been going around saying, ““Gloat, me? Smarmy, moi?””—in no circumstances would such a thing cross his mind. However, today we see the true face of Scottish National party triumphalism—the utter contempt in its treatment of the people of Scotland, in presuming to know how they will cast their votes in two days’ time. I sincerely hope that the hon. Gentleman will repeat his performance in Scotland, so that more people can see the ugly arrogance of a party that thinks that it has the voters in its pocket. In the few minutes that I have left I want to deal with key issues, and perhaps I can draw together some of the comments that have been made. My hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton, East (Mr. Hood) set out in incontrovertible detail the point that if Scotland secedes from the United Kingdom, it leaves the EU. That is a fact. If it wants to get back into the EU it must reapply. It must join a queue, behind Turkey and other nations, and there would have to be an enlargement treaty. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire shakes his head, but if he has any facts to disprove that, let him state them. However, Scotland would not only be out of the EU, with the disastrous ramifications that that would have for Scottish jobs, industry and inward investment. An independent Scotland that left the United Kingdom would also leave behind the G8, permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council, and NATO. What other country is leaving NATO when others around Europe are lining up to join it? That is the vision of the SNP for Scotland: isolated, irrelevant and defenceless. It is not my vision for Scotland, and it is not Labour’s. We have today seen the duplicitous way in which the SNP turns every criticism of it into criticism of Scotland. I am not here to criticise Scotland, but to criticise the SNP and its ruinous vision for Scotland, which would destroy jobs and put our monetary policy in the hands of a foreign country, and which has no credibility in fiscal policy. Our vision is of a Scotland that will, within a dozen years, have the best education system in the world, because in the knowledge-based economy of the 21st century the investment that we put into people by way of education, skills, learning and training will bring us to pre-eminence. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire is now chuntering away from a sedentary position. We are now fourth best in the world; we are in striking distance of being the best-educated country in the world, and we have set ourselves the target of doing it in a dozen years. We will achieve that under Labour, but if we spend the next three years in turmoil and instability, telling any potential investors, ““Do not come to Scotland, because we do not know what our currency will be, whether we will be in the EU or what our monetary or fiscal framework will be,”” how on earth will we attract the brightest and best to come and stay in Scotland? How can we continue to reverse the brain drain, as we are now doing? Just last week, we learned that the population of Scotland has increased for the fourth year in a row. That is a tribute to the success of the Labour-led Scottish Executive, and I am convinced that people will see that and vote for education and not separation on Thursday.