SCOTLAND can leave the political union with Westminster while still holding to five other unions – the EU, Nato, the currency, the Crown and its social ties with the rest of England and Wales, Alex Salmond has said.

This strategy for keeping intact five out of six of our sets of relationships with the rest of the UK was spelled out by the First Minister in a speech at the Nigg energy park in Ross-shire.

He told workers an independent Scotland would never be a country that cut tax for the super rich while imposing the bedroom tax.

"The political union does not work for Scotland any more. It holds Scotland back and imperils our future. It will not bend and it will not change of its own accord. So we will, we must, change it.

"We must address and fundamentally change the political and economic union as a matter of urgency. This political union is only one of six unions that govern our lives today in Scotland, and the case for independence is fundamentally a democratic one."

He added: "A vote for independence next year will address the democratic deficit which sees policies like the punitive bedroom tax, the renewal of Trident or Royal Mail privatisation imposed on Scotland against the wishes of Scotland's democratically elected representatives.

"But that will still leave five other unions intact. We will embrace those other unions while using the powers of independence to renew and improve them."

He said the social union binding UK residents did not rely on the choices made by politicians and parliaments.

After independence "people in England will still cheer Andy Murray, and people in Scotland will still support the Lions at rugby", he insisted.

People would still be able to move about the UK freely for work, rejecting claims made by former chancellor Alistair Darling that being part of Britain provides people in Scotland with greater opportunities.

Mr Darling, leader of the Better Together campaign to keep Scotland

in the UK, argued in a speech in Glasgow this week: "The complete freedom of movement that we enjoy provides immediate opportunities for young people to have careers that span the whole of the UK."

But Mr Salmond said: "We will continue to share ties. The idea that these ties are dependent on a Parliament in London are and have always been totally nonsensical."

He claimed the powers of independence could boost the economy, create jobs and build "a more prosperous society".

A Better Together spokesman said: "Alex Salmond wants us to believe that if we vote for separation then somehow everything will change. But nothing will change. It is absolute rubbish."

LibDem leader Willie Rennie said: "If we slam the door in the face of the UK they may just lock it from the other side."

* A senior figure at the Constitution Commission has condemned Westminster for "jerry building" proposed changes to procedures to block non-English MPs from voting on issues affecting only England.

Writing in The Herald today Dr Elliot Bulmer, research director at the commission, claims: "Is this not the very situation that Labour opponents of independence, out of solidarity for our suffering friends and brethren to the south, insist we must vote No to avoid? The argument that 'the UK protects England from the Tories', always shaky at best, has vanished.

"The best case for Scottish independence does not rest primarily on nationalism, nor even on economic arguments, but upon good governance and democracy: the belief that a Scottish State could do a better job of serving the common weal than the UK has done."