SNP starts its biggest campaign

Angus Robertson says the push for Scottish autonomy starts now (PA)

Scottish National Party leaders are building a "war chest" to help fight their "biggest ever campaign" in the run-up to an independence referendum.

Party bosses formally launched that campaign yesterday, helped by a bequest of almost £1m from Scotland's national poet Edwin Morgan. Nationalists are also launching their "biggest donation drive ever", with party members urged to help build up a "fighting fund" for the independence campaign.

The SNP campaign director Angus Robertson told the party's annual conference in Inverness: "Our independence campaign starts now. It's starting. The starting gun is being fired." He added that the campaign had been "generously supported" by Edwin Morgan, who left the party £918,000 in his will.

No date has been set for the vote on Scotland's constitutional future but Nationalist leaders have pledged it will take place in the second half of Holyrood's five-year parliamentary term.