Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander will today call for a “national convention” to help shape the future of Scotland after next year’s independence referendum.
He will use a lecture at Edinburgh University to urge a broad range of organisations to form a talking shop to help improve the economy and respond to long-term issues such as climate change.
The body – based loosely on the constitutional convention which developed plans for Holyrood in the 1990s – would allow both sides to “walk forward together,” he will say.
In full: Douglas Alexander's 'AVoice of Hope in the Scottish Conversation' speech
The Paisley and Renfrewshire South MP will also dismiss Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s appeal last year for Labour voters to back independence as a means to replace the Conservative-led Government at Westminster and secure a more socially just Scotland.
He will claim Ms Sturgeon was forced to base her case for independence on “ideology” after SNP failed to persuade voters Scotland should leave the UK for reasons of national identity or create the impression going it along had become inevitable.
He will add: “The Nationalists want to make the referendum a choice between independence and inevitable, perpetual, infinite Tory governments. This is an opportunistic political strategy designed to make antipathy to the Tories synonymous with support for independence.
“Over the last 12 months, Labour has maintained a lead in most opinion polls regarding voting intentions at the next UK general election. The fact the prospect of a change of Government at Westminster in the next two years has been a constant feature of the polls has denied the Nationalist their favourite argument.”
His plan for a national convention – dubbed Scotland 2025 – to start in 2015, would bring trades unions, churches, voluntary organisations and other bodies together.
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