Pound falls after Scottish poll shows majority for independence

London (Alliance News) - The pound fell on Monday after a weekend opinion poll showed for the first time that a majority of Scots would vote for independence from the UK, days before a referendum on the union.

Sterling fell by around 1.3% against the dollar to a ten-month low of 1.61, while the FTSE 100 index was also down 1% as stocks with links to Scotland were sold off.

Shares in the Scotland-based Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group were down 3%, while those in asset managers Standard Life were down 4%.

The opinion poll by YouGov for the Sunday Times was the first to put pro-independence campaigners ahead, with less than two weeks to go before Scots vote on whether to end more than 300 years of union with the rest of the UK.

With undecided voters excluded, it said 51% of Scottish voters favoured independence while 49% were against.

But John Curtice, professor of politics at Scotland's Strathclyde University told dpa that the odds were still 'clearly in favour' of a 'No' vote to independence.

'If you look across the polls as a whole at the moment ... certainly the 'Yes' side are at least in as strong a position as they've ever been in this campaign.

'But exactly how strong that position is ... there has to be a degree of uncertainty, given that so far no one has replicated the swing that YouGov have come up with,' he said.

But he said that the 'Yes' side had been successful in painting a more positive economic picture of an independent Scotland while the 'No' campaign was seen as negative and less honest.

British Chancellor George Osborne has insisted that if Scotland votes for independence the rest of Britain will not share the pound with it. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has threatened that Edinburgh will not take on it share of the national debt if it is denied a formal currency union.

Michael Hewson, an analyst at CMC Markets, said that investors who has previously regarded a vote for independence as an 'outlier' had been rattled by the YouGov poll.

'One thing is certain, if we get this sort of volatility on the prospect of a Yes vote, can you imagine the reaction if we do get a Yes vote? It's not likely to be pretty,' he added.

After the poll was published, Osborne announced that a new timetable for the devolution of powers to Scotland - in the event of a 'no' vote to independence - would be announced in the coming days.

The announcement was dismissed as a 'bribe' and a 'panicky measure' by Salmond.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, who is playing a key role in the pro-union Better Together campaign, unveiled the opposition Labour Party's own timetable for more devolution late Monday.

Work on legislation to give the Scottish parliament in Edinburgh more powers would begin the day after the September 18 referendum, he said, and proposals would be set out in a 'command paper' by the end of October.

Legislation would then be put forward to parliament in Westminster in January, he said.

It was not at first clear whether his timetable was endorsed by Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative party, but a Downing Street source told the Press Association news wire, 'We very much welcome this intervention by Gordon Brown.'

Labour, the Conservatives and their coalition partners the Liberal Democrats had been working on proposals to strengthen devolution for several months, the source said, and their plans overlapped substantially.

Cameron is reportedly likely to set out the Conservative proposals later in the week.

Copyright dpa