Mr Salmond was addressing the launch in Edinburgh last night of a new Independence Convention that will see the Nationalists and two of Scotland’s smaller opposition parties — the Greens and the Socialists — join together to campaign for the country to separate from the rest of the UK and for the repeal of the 1707 Act of Union. The SNP leader, speaking on St Andrew’s Day, said that the founding of the convention would begin a process leading to “equality, freedom and national independence”.

“Independence is coming as sure as night follows day,” he said, “and only with independence will we have the power and opportunity to let Scotland flourish.” He added that it was vital to reassert what he described as “Scotland’s claim of right” — to acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs.

In spite of the high hopes when the devolved Scottish Parliament was created in 1999, Mr Salmond said, faith in the new body had been replaced by frustration. Expectations had been dulled by what he claimed was a Scottish Executive without leadership and a Parliament without real power.

The path to the formation of the Convention has been a rocky one for the SNP. When it was first mooted several years by Alex Neil, the left-wing SNP MSP, John Swinney, the then leader of the Nationalists, rejected it. Mr Salmond, who replaced Mr Swinney last year, has now taken up the idea, although some of his MSPs at Holyrood believe that it is unwise for the Nationalists to be seen joining forces with the hard-Left SSP. They also say that the two other parties in the Convention do not have the objective of Scottish independence as their top policy priority — unlike the SNP.

The Scottish Tories poured scorn on the setting up of the new convention. Murdo Fraser, MSP, the deputy leader, said that it was completely against the spirit of St Andrew’s Day, which, he added, should be a day to unite all Scots proud of their national identity, regardless of political persuasion. “If the main protagonists weren’t such an irrelevance to modern Scotland, I would be demanding an explanation from them,” Mr Fraser said. He accused the Nationalists of hijacking a day of national celebration to join with the other minor parties who shared their ambition of “turning Scotland into an independent socialist backwater”.

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