THE Better Together campaign has been labelled "blithering idiots" by Ukip for not allowing Nigel Farage to join forces with the pro-UK campaign while the party insists its members are, nonetheless, helping the anti-independence cause at a grassroots level in Scotland.
The Ukip leader will be in Edinburgh tomorrow with chief fundraiser, multi-millionaire Stuart Wheeler, for strategy meetings to prepare for the 2014 European elections as well as a "secret dinner" with local supporters when the issue of financial support is expected to be raised.
The Better Together campaign has rejected an approach from Mr Farage for Ukip to join its push against Scottish independence, saying: "They are not a Scottish party and this is a Scottish debate."
However, a senior Ukip source said in response to the rejection: "They are blithering idiots, yet we agree with them on the policy for the UK. They are still stuck in the same mindset that England was about Ukip for years; that we have horns and kill babies."
He pointed to how polls showed support was growing for Ukip north of the Border and that, come the 2014 European elections, the party had a "50-50 chance" of getting a Scottish MEP.
Meantime, in response to the Better Campaign's rebuttal, Arthur Misty Thackeray, Ukip's Scotland vice-chairman, said: "Ukip's position is that we are happy for our activists to continue at the grassroots working alongside Better Together as we have been doing all along. It is entirely up to them whether or not they choose to benefit from having Nigel Farage and the Ukip team on side with our growing support, which comes from many who have previously not followed politics. Either way, I assure the voting public that Ukip will be front and centre, playing a leading role in resolutely defending our Union."
A spokesman for the Better Campaign said it regarded as a "badge of honour" being labelled blithering idiots by Ukip.
He stressed the campaign was made up of the three Scottish Unionist parties and that would not change, but that ordinary Ukip members who supported Scotland staying in the UK could join it.
Elsewhere, the anti-EU party yesterday named Otto Inglis, the party's Scotland secretary and an Edinburgh businessman, as its candidate to contest the Aberdeen Donside Holyrood by-election on June 20.
The by-election has been caused by the death of the SNP MSP Brian Adam, 64, who died last month from cancer.
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