UKIP: ‘Better Together is clueless and divided’
SCOTLAND’S first democratically elected UKIP politician has launched a savage attack on the pro-Union Better Together campaign.
David Coburn has described Alistair Darling and the anti-independence movement as clueless and divided.
In an embarrassing setback for the former Labour Chancellor, Mr Coburn – writing in The Scottish Mail on Sunday today – says he will ‘take up the baton’ from a campaign he says is ‘not very much together at all’ and doesn’t know how to take on the Nationalists.
Mr Coburn was elected last week as one of Scotland’s Euro MPs – the first UKIP candidate to win any election in Scotland.
The businessman and antique dealer is defiantly pro-UK – as well as being anti-EU and anti-immigration. But he believes the Better Together campaign, led by Mr Darling, has been too soft on the dangers of independence.
Mr Coburn believes the pro-UK campaign should be more robust, more hard-hitting and says he intends to use his position as a UKIP MEP to take the fight to Alex Salmond.
He says: ‘We really need to do something about the campaign to save the United Kingdom and now I am an elected politician, I intend to do something about it. I shall be picking up the baton where the Better Together campaign seems to have dropped it.
‘Really, they haven’t got much of an idea – they claim to be Better Together but they are not very much together at all. UKIP is going to do its own thing and we will welcome anyone who wants to join us.’
Mr Coburn says there has been too much ‘fiddle-faddling around’ and his messages about the dangers of independence will be ‘more punchy and more hard hitting’ than the Better Together efforts.
‘We have to spell out what is actually going to happen in the event of separation,’ he says.
But a spokesman for Better Together dismissed Mr Coburn’s criticisms.
He said: ‘Better Together are used to being attacked by Nationalists who are motivated by the politics of grievance.
‘Whether it is UKIP or the SNP, it is all water off a duck’s back to us.’