Darling slams Yes camp for tax-exile support

Monaco-based Scot backs independence to claims of “rank hypocrisy”.

The Yes camp have been branded hypocrites for using tax-exile billionaire Jim McColl to front a new independence drive.

The Monaco-based Scots entrepreneur who last week saved the last shipbuilder on the lower Clyde is this week writing to 675,000 undecided and “soft” No voters this week urging them to vote Yes.

But former Chancellor and Better Together leader Alistair Darling last night described the move as “rank hypocrisy” because McColl doesn’t live in Scotland.

The referendum campaign will intensify even further this week with both sides pumping out millions of leaflets, adverts and organising hundreds of events.

Better Together is writing to every young voter in the country, as well as launching a fresh nationwide advertising campaign.

On the Yes side, Alex Salmond will hold a question and answer session on Facebook, while a new TV advert will focus on the NHS.

Mr Darling said: “The contrast couldn’t be clearer. When they had the opportunity to get rid of the bedroom tax, the majority of their MPs failed to show.

“And yet they have someone who doesn’t live in this country and doesn’t pay tax here saying voters should support the nationalists. It is rank hypocrisy.

“They’ve got the chance to make Scotland a better place and to help families in this country and they pass up the opportunity. They’ve got this leaflet by somebody who simply doesn’t live here.”

McColl is a self-made businessman who owns the engineering giant Clyde Blowers. This week he is expected to get formal control of the collapsed Ferguson shipyard in Port Glasgow and has pledged to create hundreds of jobs by making the facility an engineering centre of excellence.

But McColl has attracted criticism in the past for making his main place of residence the tax haven of Monaco.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “Jim McColl is a major employer in Scotland. He has just intervened to save a shipyard.

“He is a successful businessman and entrepreneur and is putting his name to this letter to explain why he thinks Scotland should vote Yes. I think it is something that will be very powerful.”

Meanwhile, 16 Scottish football legends have declared their support for a No vote in the referendum.

The squad, which includes Lisbon lion Bertie Auld, and former Rangers players Barry Ferguson and Ally McCoist, is “managed” by former Old Firm managers Walter Smith and Billy McNeill.

They have all signed up to a joint statement calling on “every patriotic Scot to help maintain Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom which has served Scotland so well”.

Elsewhere, Better Together has been left red-faced after an activist who appeared in an official No campaign video from 2012 has declared for Yes.

Rebecca Bernklow said: “I guess I was scared that it was too soon and that we would struggle economically.”