Queen urges Scots to ‘think carefully about future’ ahead of referendum vote

Scots "should think very carefully about the future" before deciding on this week's independence referendum, Queen Elizabeth has said.

Her remarks, made to a member of the public after Sunday service at Balmoral, have not been contested by Buckingham Palace.

The Queen had until now avoided entering the referendum debate, while the palace issued a statement only last week that “the monarchy is above politics”. The Queen is currently staying at Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire for her summer holidays, where she will remain until after the referendum result is declared.

Yet another slew of opinion polls have reported that the result is too close to call. This means that up to 500,000 undecided voters could hold the key to the result.

During a hectic weekend of campaigning, Scottish first minister Alex Salmond said Scots were facing a "once-in-a-generation" chance of independence.

Until now, there has been a belief that the pro-independence campaign would mobilise quickly after a defeat to push for a rerun of the campaign.

The last two constitutional referendums in Scotland took place in 1979 and 1997, Mr Salmond told the BBC: "That's what I mean by a political generation. In my opinion, and it just my opinion, then this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Scotland, or even once-in-a-lifetime," he said.

Displaying confidence, the Scottish National Party leader said leading Scottish figures favouring a No vote have said they will help him if the result goes against them.

Believing that undecided voters can be brought on side, Mr Salmond said: “We tend to take the attitude that there isn’t so much a No vote in Scotland. There are only deferred Yes [voters]. And that’s been one of the successes of our campaign.”

Thousands of Yes supporters protested loudly outside the BBC’s offices in Glasgow, claiming the corporation has been biased in its reporting.

The charge is denied by the BBC, which has measured its output down to the second to ensure that both sides in the debate are given equal airtime.

‘On the attack’

“Yesterday it was the banks and some of the largest employers in Scotland. Today it’s the BBC and MI5. In the world of Alex Salmond and his fellow nationalists, everybody is against them,” said the Better Together campaign, which has itself frequently criticised the BBC during the campaign. “If you aren’t actively for them, then you are against them. And if they think you are against them, they go on the attack.”

Mr Salmond rejected warnings from business leaders about costs.

“What we’ve seen in recent weeks and months in Scotland is a flowering of the confidence of the people of this country. They know that there are people in the No campaign trying to scare them,” he said.

“We are within days of taking control of the future of this country. We can vote Yes on Thursday and we can take control.”

However, Better Together leader Alistair Darling accused Mr Salmond of "completing a victory lap" even before Thursday's vote result is announced.

Major questions remained unanswered, he added, saying that Mr Salmond “ is just simply asserting that, lo and behold, on Friday morning, everybody else is wrong, they are all going to fall in line with what he is going to say”.

Following repeated examples where No on-street campaign events have been shouted down by Yes supporters, Mr Darling said a majority of Scots “don’t want this”.

“I chose to take part in this campaign but I think the majority of people, the quiet majority who are beginning to speak out, are not prepared to be bullied in to accepting that there is only one side here. Both of us should have been entitled to set out our views, with passion, with vigour,” he said.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch flew into Aberdeen on Saturday for a surprise one-day trip, during which he visited the area where his forebears lived before emigrating to Australia.

His Scottish Sun has yet to declare its position in the campaign, though its coverage is increasingly favouring the Yes side.