‘Winner’ Salmond says 
debate momentum will 
see Yes lobby to victory

Mr Salmond said the “Yes campaign are going to have our tails up and our tails will be up for the next three weeks as we carry this campaign to victory”.

But Mr Darling, leader of the pro-UK Better Together campaign, said yesterday the independence referendum debate will be a “fight right down to the wire”.

He insisted his campaign had the momentum coming out of Monday’s BBC debate – the second and final TV clash between the two politicians.

A snap poll afterwards by ICM for the Guardian newspaper showed 71 per cent of people questioned thought Mr Salmond won the debate, compared with 29 per cent for Mr Darling.

But the former chancellor insisted: “All the polls that have been published for the last few months consistently show us with a lead, most of them a double-digit lead.

“I’m not complacent – a lot can happen in the next three weeks – but we have momentum. We’re making good progress, our activity on the ground, on the streets, has been stepped up dramatically, the results we’re getting in are extremely encouraging.”

“I’ve always said I thought this would be a fight right down to the wire, but I am increasingly confident.”

Mr Darling said that while TV debates were part of the democratic process, the “big debate that actually matters is in people’s sitting rooms and people’s kitchens”.

Comment: Page 12.