Gary Gibbon: Scotland’s second leaders’ debate
Political Editor Gary Gibbon on the second televised leaders’ debate in Scotland:
Jim Murphy was much more on his best form than yesterday. One colleague said the Scottish Labour leader had been unnerved by the hostility he sensed in the audience last night. Tonight the audience was revved up and more animated clapping all-comers (with the possible exception of UKIP).
Lib Dem Scottish leader Willie Rennie and Jim Murphy both made much of the venue, Aberdeen, and the oil price plummet that has hurt that city so badly. Both said it was a story in microcosm of the threat Scotland would suffer if it was independent and dependent on oil tax revenues.
The First Minister said no other oil-producing country would give up on its autonomy just because the oil price had gone down. Westminster, she said, was not protecting Scotland and redistributing as Jim Murphy said it was.