Mandy Rhodes | Holyrood
The Nationalists’ gathering is the last in the national party conference season and follows on from all the other main party conferences in Brighton, Manchester and Birmingham during which one man, Alex Salmond, was singled out for special mention.
Whether it was in Miliband’s famously noteless ‘One nation’ diatribe or David Cameron’s more explicit rallying call to his troops to rise up and prepare for the referendum battle, the SNP, a party that not so many years ago would have been relegated to the ranks of militants and cranks, is now the common threat that unifies UK parties of quite different political hues under the collective banner of ‘Better Together’.
The Prime Minister closed his conference almost with a wagging finger to Salmond, warning that he was coming to Scotland to “sort that referendum on independence”. Five days later he flew into Edinburgh and signed a document that not only paves the way for what all Nationalists live and breathe for; the right to vote on independence, but also gives Alex Salmond a legally watertight referendum, the right to extend the franchise, to confirm the date that he had already decided and gives his government the final say on campaign funding.
Told them, then, David…
