Salmond slates Aussie PM

Alex Salmond has slammed the “foolish, hypocritical and offensive” criticism of independence by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The right-wing Australian premier said it was “hard to see how the world would be helped by an independent Scotland”.

But the intervention provoked a furious response from the First Minister who described it as “bewildering” and “ludicrous”.

Mr Abbott, who spent two years at the University of Oxford, described himself as a “friend of Britain” in a newspaper interview.

He said: “What the Scots do is a matter for the Scots and not for a moment do I presume to tell Scottish voters which way they should vote.

“But as a friend of Britain, it’s hard to see how the world would be helped by an independent Scotland.

“I think that the people who would like to see the break-up of the United Kingdom are not the friends of justice, not the friends of freedom.”

He added: “The countries that would cheer at the prospect of the break-up with the United Kingdom are not the countries whose company one would like to keep.”

Mr Salmond said the comments were “foolish because of the way he said it”.

“To say the people of Scotland who supported independence weren’t friends of freedom or justice, I mean, the independence process is about freedom and justice.”