Salmond: the people are about to speak...and it will scare the life out of Cameron

People are now making up their minds and the Salmond calm of a year ago has turned to bullishness as the No lead in the polls has narrowed dramatically.

Just after an interview in the Marcliffe Hotel West of Aberdeen, a YouGov poll showed the gap narrowing to just six points, an eight-point rise in less than a month, which he was to hail as taking us a step closer to independence.

Then came the weekend's shock poll for YouGov which put Yes in the lead for the first time and another for TNS which underlines how close the race is.

Mr Salmond says: "The other thing that has moved, which I actually think is more significant, is the spectrum of people who are concerned about this issue - that is to say the spectrum of people who have engaged in politics.

"We are now dealing with a political electorate of 80% not 60%. What has moved is the 20% of people who have never spoken before, never in their life thought Scottish politics important or relevant or productive enough to vote for any politician of any political party. These people are about to speak and when they do it will make the Hampden roar look like nothing at all, and it will scare the life out of Mr Cameron and his party and the entire Westminster establishment."

So why has this dramatic shift happened? "It's happened through a great deal of work by a great grassroots campaign, energising and influencing people.

"Secondly, what people are being asked to decide upon is something fundamentally important, more important than any politician or any political party, something defining in the political history of the country. And, thirdly, not because of recession but because of the attitude to how and who should pay the price of recession.

"People understand that in any ordered society not everything goes perfectly. People understand that there will always be difficulties, setbacks, even world recessions along the way. What people don't understand is an attitude that says devil take the hindmost when we're up against it. This is huge. It's the reality. It's what people will no longer accept, and this is the first actual time to do anything about it."

The First Minister had already embarked on his 5:2 weight loss programme a year ago and has kept it up, becoming steadily leaner and, as the second televised debate showed, meaner. In his usual way, in the course of the interview he found time to quote Adam Smith, The Corries and the Illiad, the part about Achilles having to choose between a long life and a glorious one.

He insisted: "We now have a situation where that group of people for the first time in Scottish democratic history have the opportunity to speak, and they know it. The empowerment and the energy and the electrification of politics that is coming is something that the No campaign will be ill-equipped to deal with.

"All the conventional nostrums, all the scaremongering, all the fears, all the smears, all the planned, synchronised, targeted approaches to particular sections of the electorate; all the stoking of division, all the trying to undermine confidence - none of this is going to touch this, because it's based on something much more fundamental. It's a whole group of people who for the first time have an opportunity to make a substantial difference, and they are going to take it, and it's going to be massive."

I expressed doubt. Before Sunday, not a single poll had yet given Yes a lead. "There is no poll that captures the whole population. There is nobody polled who hasn't been part of the voting class, by definition," he replies. Where is the evidence for that? He says: "Go to Wester Hailes and have a look round. Do it tomorrow. Draw your own conclusions. It's quite funny, I was there last week and looking at this mass of posters - as I saw in Leith, as I saw in Garthdee in Aberdeen today - a display of strong, visible, enthusiastic Yes support.

"The registration campaign has been excellent. If I could wish for something right now I would wish for another week of registration. I don't underrate the determination of some people to vote, even some who have not been at a polling station before.

"You heard it expressed at the second TV debate, the guy who said: 'If we're better together, why does it not feel better now?'

"The whole comfortable assumption behind this slogan stolen from the Quebec federalists, Non Merci, No Thanks, involves people who can say that because they are not bothered by the proposition."

He adds: "I am saying there are lots of people in Scotland who have a fundamental concern for the have-nots, because they realise, as any sensible politician or economist understands that, as Adam Smith once put it, 'No society can be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable'.

"The Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is saying the same thing. Any rational, sensible person understands that. It's not Yes who have got the narrow appeal. It's No who have got the narrow appeal, because they believe there is a narrow section of the electorate in which they can instil fear and foreboding and tell them things are really all right and we will be comfortable and it will be OK if nothing changes."

He adds: "Take that appalling, sexist broadcast that said here is a segment we have identified through socio-economic analysis, no doubt paid for by the UK Government, and therefore we must wholesale say whatever we think we need to say to say to make people feel frightened or worried.

"Politics works when people collectively, across the socio-economic spectrum get a sense and a feel for what's right and proper and when they do, they'll vote for it. Because most of us, at the end of the day, still think things can get better and, if we didn't believe that, not just for ourselves but for everybody and our children and grandchildren, there are few people in this society who are so comfortable they don't believe things have to get better for others or for future generations.

"And there are very few people who are so worn down that they don't still think that's possible and can feel inspired to vote for it. We have to find the organisation to allow the people who want to vote to vote, and hopefully we will.

"We have to keep our message on that essential offer that things can get better, that we don't have to 'rise and be a nation again' but just believe in ourselves."

But haven't Better Together successfully tapped into the concerns of those who are comfortably off and the business community who fear that change could threaten that? "We had a letter signed by more than 200 business people, and the difference between their letter and the letter of the No campaign the day before was not just positivity against negativity. If I had to back a business, I'd back the ones who were positive.

"But more than that, more than the attractiveness of those calling themselves entrepreneurs wanting to seize the opportunities as opposed to stressing the downside, it was the phrase in the letter which said they could see a prosperous economy and a just society, and a fairness in society. It's the very last thing you would hear from the CBI or out of the mouth of David Cameron.

"That's the difference between those who signed that letter, who would no doubt be categorised as ABs. In Scotland we have ABs who care about the CDs and Es."

He adds: "No doubt an important part of our message is to reassure people that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. But there is a category of people, and don't underrate them in Scotland for they are a group which has never been small, who are comfortably off and who regard the most important thing in politics as being to enable other people to share in that good fortune.

"That has been a message of some of the greatest entrepreneurs through history and it's something I saw reflected in that letter. I think it's the prevailing wind."

Mr Salmond cuts an entirely different, sharper and less hesitant figure than the one who performed so poorly - by his standards - in the first televised debate against Alistair Darling.

The SNP had planned to use the "summer of sport" with the Commonwealth Games at its heart to set the mood music for the final stage of the referendum campaign, tapping into the self-confidence that would flow if the Glasgow Games were a success.

He reveals, however, that this had a downside in personal terms, which explains why he under-performed in that first debate.

"In reality I was tired the first time. By the time I finished the Commonwealth Games I had no idea what a draining process it would be because it's like a football manager watching a football match, not being in total control of what's happening on the pitch. But what changed is that I turned up for the second debate."

Was there a turning point in that second debate when he knew he was going to come out on top? He has already mentioned the questioner who asked why things were not better now, under the Union, and the groan that rang round the audience at Kelvingrove when Mr Darling attempted to re-run his currency Plan B line of attack.

He says: "I have always believed there is a point, and I think I made it a year ago, where it's like the old Dracula movies - I'm not comparing Alistair Darling to Dracula, incidentally, I'm talking about fear-mongering. What is Dracula? In the genre he is the unspoken fear that something is going to come, when you are defenceless in the night etc.

"The point is that Dracula gets dragged into the sunlight and disintegrates into dust. I have always believed that about bogeymen and about fears, that as they get repeated and analysed and dragged into the sunlight they start to crumble into the dust."

He also observed: "Alistair Darling claims health spending is increasing while Andy Burnham insists that over the past four years it hasn't. The Welsh Labour Health Minister says the reason it's declining in Wales is because of Westminster cutbacks which apparently don't exist, if you believe Alistair Darling.

"The Jarrow Marchers are marching in vain through England against privatisation that doesn't really exist or, if it exists, isn't really important, according to Alistair Darling. Yeah, sure. Aye, right."

But surely uncertainties over a currency union or the EU must still be hurting the Yes campaign? "On currency, they've played it out, as the audience at the second televised debate showed full well. It's become a massive turn-off because the people understand they're playing a game.

"On Europe they have scarcely mentioned it in this campaign. Why? Because the new, incoming President of the European Commission has said he understands and will respect the democratic process. Nobody, but nobody, believes that the rest of Europe wants to exclude Scotland and everybody knows that a large part of Westminster wants to exclude the rest of Europe."

What about the former deputy governor of the Bank of England who called the threat not to pay a share of UK debt a "moral outrage"?

"It's interesting he says moral outrage. Obviously not a legal outrage because the Treasury confirmed on January 13 this year what the fiscal commission had suggested, that under the terms of their argument the legal liability remained with them, or to quote that day's Notice to Markets exactly, the Treasury accept the responsibility under all constitutional circumstances.

"So we can just remove the word default because it doesn't exist. You can't default on a debt that isn't yours. You can't default on a debt that will be paid and that's what the Treasury notice said. So when a former deputy governor talks about a moral outrage that's because they can't talk about a legal outrage because that position is crystal clear. Now that's unfortunate from their point of view but nonetheless that is the case."

Mr Salmond adds: "What I think is a moral confirmation is the willingness of the Scottish Government and the Scottish people to say responsibly that, if there is to be a proper share of financial assets, then we are also prepared to have a proper share of financial liabilities, and accept our responsibility for debts incurred largely by George Osborne and Alistair Darling - 60% of the UK's enormous debt of £1.3 trillion was accumulated by them. I think that's a highly responsible, some would say generous, gesture for us to make.

"In reality, this is why I think there are good reasons why in the famous words of the anonymous senior Government Minister that 'of course there would be a currency union' for two reasons.

"One is this argument about debt, which follows as night follows day. And secondly because of English and rUK interests. What English business wants to pay extra costs for exporting to Scotland? It's ludicrous. We're their second biggest market just as they are our biggest market."

There is another key factor blunting Europe as a weapon of attack for the No campaign and it also explains why many at Westminster have not had a good war in terms of the referendum campaign. Mr Salmond explains: "I think the Westminster system has been absorbed in complacency and, secondly, in other issues.

"The complacency, obviously, is the thought that the Scots would not have the temerity to defy their wishes. The other issue is largely their obsession with withdrawing from the European Union and the arguments around that.

"I wasn't going to say Westminster isn't capable of dealing with more than one constitutional issue at a time, but actually I think that's probably true.

"It's been an obsession, a total, utter, complete black hole-type obsession with European exit, Britex."

As we spoke Tory MP Douglas Carswell had just defected to UKIP, resigning his Clacton seat to provoke a by-election, and the bookmakers had installed Boris Johnson as favourite to be next Tory leader. How did these impact on the Scottish question? The FM was visibly excited by the twin spectres, saying: "Just as David Cameron thought it was safe to threaten a harder line on Europe, he finds that the further he goes the worse it will get. He is somebody who is no longer in control of events.

"He thought he could hint at a referendum and that would quell the problem. He thought he could state there would be a referendum and that would solve the problem. He is in the ultimate bad place.

"Danegeld is the wrong phrase. It must be UKIP-geld or Europhobia-geld, perhaps. The more he concedes the worse it will get, so this is a Prime Minister who is a prisoner of the prejudice to which he has been pandering."

He adds: "I have to say that Prime Minister Boris Johnston would be four words which would galvanise much of the Yes campaign. Prime Minister David Cameron is bad enough. When David Cameron supped his sparkling mineral water in the absence of champagne at the CBI white tie dinner he might have reflected on why Scots see him as the very personification of an establishment that needs to be told to take a hike."

The choreographed opening to the final campaign phase had taken him to the picturesque bowling club in the shadow of the magnificent ruins of Arbroath Abbey, of Declaration fame and it was there that he mentioned the Greek notion of the choice between a long life and a glorious one, saying he would quit politics in exchange for a Yes vote.

"I love being First Minister of Scotland but if I was given the choice between being First Minister and Scottish independence I'd choose Scottish independence without any hesitation, with not a scintilla of doubt," he said.

"I love the SNP. I think the SNP, for all the faults of any human organisation, has got a fantastic heart as a political party. So I love the SNP to bits but if someone told me I could have independence if the SNP was wound up in the next 24 hours then I'd wind it up if that was in my power.

"It's not about a person, party, programme or any politician. It's about Scotland having the democratic capability to choose a government of its own making. That's what it's about."

If Scotland votes Yes, how does the First Minister envisage the negotiations with Westminster going?

"I believe they will negotiate in good faith but what I have no faith in is what happens if if you leave the Treasury with the whip hand. If you do so, then the Treasury will exert that whip hand. That is surely one of the great lessons in life.

"But we won't be under the tutelage of the London Treasury. I can't think of a better place to go into hard but reasonable negotiations than with a zero share in legal terms of the enormous debt, willing to accept in moral terms a proper share in return for a proper share of assets. I don't thinks that's a bad negotiating position to be in.

"I don't just relish going into these negotiations after a Yes vote, I anticipate going into them and I will be taking with me a heavyweight team, including Alistair Carmichael ... and, perhaps Alistair Darling."