ALEX Salmond has claimed the arguments for a Scottish currency are “much stronger” than a decade ago when he pledged to keep the pound in an independent country.
The former First Minister suggested the UK’s exit from the European Union had bolstered the case for the country to adopt a new currency.
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It is despite having previously insisted that Scotland would keep the pound “come what may” when he made the case for a split from the UK in the referendum in 2014.
During an appearance on the BBC’s Debate Night programme, he said: “The arguments for having a Scottish currency are much, much stronger than they were in a situation where the rest of the UK was in Europe.
“So, the arguments change with time, and the independence campaign has to update its arguments so they’re not the arguments of 2014, but the arguments for 2024 and the next 10 years.”
Scotland’s currency was a key issue during the independence referendum a decade ago, with the pro-UK Better Together campaign using the uncertainty over whether the pound could be retained as an argument for remaining in the UK.
MORE ON INDYREF TEN YEARS ON
At the time, Mr Salmond said that adopting a formal currency union would be the best option and claimed that “no one can stop us from using it”.
But, Alistair Darling, the former Labour chancellor and leader of Better Together, had claimed that political parties at Westminster would be “almost certain” to oppose the idea of Scotland being in a currency union.
In 2022, then-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon made a revised pitch for independence, stating that Scotland would keep the pound before moving to its own currency when the “time is right”.
And she said that use of sterling would be for as “short as practicable” if the country was to become an independent country.
Also appearing on the Debate Night panel, Scottish Tory MSP Jackson Carlaw hit out at the SNP’s record in government over the last decade as he shot down the idea of another push for independence.
He said: “Since 2014, it seems that the Scottish Government has been anything but competent, it’s been wholly incompetent on every front of domestic policy, it’s failed.
“But the argument now is, ‘we’re only failing because we’re not independent’.
“They’re not saying we can be a competent government and showing the people of Scotland why they should look to independence again in the future.”
