Salmond: 'Intimidation Is Going To Backfire'

A confident Alex Salmond has told Sky News the "orchestrated campaign of intimidation" by opponents of independence will "spectacularly backfire".

Mr Salmond was speaking after a new opinion poll gave the "No" campaign an eight point lead on the final weekend of campaigning ahead of the vote on September 18.

A leading bank has also warned a "Yes" vote could be a mistake akin to those that sparked the Great Depression, and more retailers have said independence would mean higher prices.

Mr Salmond said: "Isn't it rather humiliating when a Prime Minister has to call in big business into Downing Street to try and get them to say negative things about Scotland because he's not capable of carrying forward a political campaign himself.

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"I think this orchestrated campaign of intimidation is going to backfire, is backfiring spectacularly on the no campaign and we'll see the results of that next Thursday.

"The people of Scotland are not going to have big government orchestrating big oil and big supermarkets to tell us we can't run our own country."

The latest poll, which was commissioned by the Better Together campaign and carried out by Survation, has the "No" vote on 54% and the "Yes" camp on 46% when undecided voters are factored out.

Deutsche Bank has claimed that the economic arguments against independence are "overwhelming".

Alex Salmond's cause will be backed by 35,000 volunteers this weekend

Chief economist David Folkerts-Landau said a Yes vote could be a "mistake as large as Winston Churchill's decision in 1925 to return the pound to the Gold Standard or the failure of the Federal Reserve to provide sufficient liquidity to the US banking system, which we now know brought on the Great Depression in the US".

Scotland's SNP Government accused him of failing to take into account the country's "strong fiscal position", and two senior bankers also hit out at the claim, calling it "preposterous" and "disingenuous".

Ian Blackford, who used to run Deutsche Bank's operations in Scotland and the Netherlands, and Edward McDowell, a former risk manager for Lloyds Banking Group, played down the warnings.

It comes after it was revealed Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland have drawn up plans to move their legal bases to London in the event of a "Yes" vote.

An estimated 10,000 people attended a rally by the Orange Order

Mr Salmond said there is "overwhelming evidence that the Treasury's fingerprints are all over the Royal Bank leak".

However a Treasury source told Sky News earlier this week: "It's nonsense - desperate distraction tactics."

Former prime minister Gordon Brown has also said Mr Salmond cannot continue to ignore warnings from retailers, oil companies and the financial services sector.

Meanwhile, three more retailers - Marks and Spencer, B&Q and Timpson - have said customers would be hit by higher prices under independence, in a letter published in the Daily Record.

A sign of support for the Union during the Orange Order march

Asda and John Lewis made similar assertions this week.

Many of Britain's newspapers reported on comments by a former SNP deputy leader which appeared to threaten recriminations against businesses that backed a "No" vote.

Jim Sillars said there would be "a day of reckoning with BP and the banks" if Scotland votes Yes, adding that BP would "need to learn the meaning of nationalisation".

Mr Salmond praised Mr Sillars's dedication to the campaign but said rather than a "day of reckoning", a Yes vote would be followed by a "day of celebration".

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