Brown teams up with Darling for Scottish independence intervention

Gordon Brown will today enter the debate on Scottish independence with a speech making the case for a No vote in the referendum. The intervention sees Brown link back up with his former Chancellor Alistair Darling, who is Chair of the Better Together campaign.

Darling said:

“I am very pleased that Gordon Brown is to deliver this speech on Tuesday.  His 30 years of experience inform his powerful argument that Scotland can benefit from both seizing the opportunities that come from being part of the UK, and at the same time draw on the strength of that union.”

Brown is expected to argue that the debate is not between Scotland and Britain, and that pensions are more secure as part of the union, with Scottish people having paid into the British welfare state their whole lives:

“For too long the referendum debate has been presented as one side representing Scotland and the other side representing Britain.”

“The whole point of sharing risks and resources across the UK is that it is right and proper that the British welfare state bears the rising cost of Scottish pensions as the number of old people will rise from 1 million to 1.3 million.  As the internal DWP document makes clear, it is fairer and better for everyone that Britain’s faster rising working-age population rather than Scotland’s slow rising working-age population covers the cost of the rising numbers of elderly in Scotland, because we have contributed in UK National Insurance all our lives to spread the risks of poverty in retirement.”