LONDON: Normally, the only excitement in the lives of the young sales assistants selling mobile phones and accessories in the EE shop in East Kilbride Town Centre is what happened the night before, or what the latest celebrities are tweeting or singing.
But on this particular day, there’s a celebrity of another sort right here in the Town Centre. Not young, not pretty, not a signer, but a real celebrity that will make a true difference in their lives here in the town centre — and across the rest of Scotland as well.
“I got a selfie with him,” a young sales girl with eyebrow piercings and a tattooed neck referring to Alex Salmond tells Gulf News. “Wanna see it?”
Indeed, she’s beaming, proudly showing off the picture. Salmond will be leading the bloc of 56 Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) MPs south in London’s House of Commons. And he’s the man who for 30 years has fought the cause of Scottish Independence, and brought it to the brink of leaving the 300-year-old union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
He was across the mall, signing books in Waterstones, but was instead mobbed by young Scots.
Yes, on September 18 last, the Scots lost. But after Thursday’s general election, real power for Scotland and possible independence is back on the cards.
And on Friday, the ruling Conservatives admitted the future of UK remains uncertain after the SNP election tsunami rolled aside the three main UK-focused parties in all but three seats north of the border.
Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, said she had spoken to David Cameron and he knows he faces a “great task” to save the union amid claims from Salmond that he has no “legitimacy” to govern north of the Border.
Speaking after the SNP landslide, she said the result confirmed the fear that last September’s referendum did not settle the “constitutional question”.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Scottish Liberal Democrat leader, said the landslide meant the country had to brace itself for a rerun of the referendum in the near future.
Their warnings came as Cameron returned to Downing Street to form his new Government with a pledge to govern for the entire UK, treat Scotland with respect and devolve new powers promised for the Scottish legislature in Holyrood “as fast as I can”.
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader and Salmond insisted the unprecedented result, which saw Labour all but wiped out in its former stronghold, did not provide a mandate for another vote on separation.
But Sturgeon signalled that Cameron has no authority to rule in Scotland if he ignores her party’s democratic mandate to end austerity there, in effect demanding a separate economic policy.
The astonishing scale of the SNP’s victory cast a major shadow over the union less than eight months after Scots rejected independence. Despite Sturgeon’s insistence otherwise, a series of nationalist candidates said before their election they would push for another vote.
Speaking in Edinburgh, Davidson warned that “56 of Scotland’s 59 MPs now have as their guiding principle the belief that the United Kingdom should not exist and that our nation should be separated.”
She said: “Those who support the United Kingdom have to face facts. I made it clear earlier this year that, despite our hopes, the referendum last year did not settle Scotland’s constitutional question. The result last night only confirms that viewpoint. It is unsettled business.”
— with inputs from agencies
