Labour step up efforts to get the rest of the country interested in the referendum

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a rare return to Westminster last week in an effort to engage London audiences.

This week, Shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran will go to Cardiff to make a speech echoing her former boss’s warning that a Yes vote means Scotland will cut ties with the rest of the UK.

She said: “Britain is Britain, it’s not England and the rest. Increasingly, people are beginning to understand that the separation of Scotland from the rest of the UK matters, not just to Scots, but to the rest of the UK. There’s an emotional aspect to that.

“People have grown up to be British and part of the British story and that would be broken if Scotland wasn’t part of it any more.”

She added: “The SNP very superficially try and make this debate England versus Scotland or really London versus Scotland and make out it’s not the rest of Britain we’d be separating ourselves from.

“But it would be the whole of Britain Wales, Northern Ireland, Cardiff as much as it’s Crewe. It’s Neath as much as it’s Newcastle. That really matters.”

She poured scorn on SNP claims that in the event of a Yes vote, Britain will continue as a social and cultural union.

She added: “The SNP are in denial of the impact of separation. You can’t have it both ways. There would be a rupture.”

While the arguments around independence in Scotland centre around economic issues the currency, the cost of setting up the state and whether folk will be better or worse off elsewhere in the UK it seems that an emotional appeal for the union is being promoted.

Curran argues it’s not as clear-cut as that. She said: “People put a false divide between economic and emotional arguments, but they feed off each other.

“People don’t lose their rationale just because they are dealing with stuff that’s emotional. Emotions aren’t irrational.”

In her Welsh speech she’ll draw on the historic links between Scots and Welsh mining communities and the Labour movement’s roots in Scotland and Wales.

She added: “Part of what I’ll be saying in Wales is that if you look at the social and economic issues we’re trying to grapple with, nationalism is not the answer to that and never has been the answer, and separation will damage that agenda.

“That union of common bonds levels everyone up rather than pushes everyone down, and people of the centre-left agenda retain a great commitment to it.”

She refers to J.K. Rowling’s turn of phrase that unpicking the 307-year-old union would be akin to microsurgery and welcomed the Harry Potter author’s contribution to the debate, not just because she deposited £1 million in the Better Together unionist campaign group’s coffers.

She’s pleased another international voice has come out for No in the days between US heavyweights Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both speaking out against independence.

She said: “President Obama, J.K. Rowling, David Bowie, these are people of international standing. They’ll be heard by people who are not as engaged in the independence debate and make them realise that it’s happening and the significance of the decision.”

However she condemned the treatment J.K. Rowling received on Twitter following her intervention.

Trolls subjected Rowling to foul-mouthed abuse. Curran was moved to break her own rule of not getting involved in social media arguments to slap down one leading commentator whom she accused of sexism.

She added: “There’s undoubtedly a misogynist element to the cybernats. I can laugh when people write stuff about me getting on my broomstick and that. Some of it is mild. And some of it is not mild.”

She claims UK colleagues have been shocked by what’s going on Scotland.

“We’ve all been around political campaigns for a long time and everyone’s talking about the edge to this one. It’s unique in Scotland, this level of abuse.

“When Andy Burnham and Caroline Flint both seasoned campaigners came to Scotland, both said they’d never experienced that level of abuse. I laughed and said I get it all the time.

“But you should never create a culture that allows us to think misogynistic or any sort of offensive language is acceptable. You should always call it out where you come up against it.”