Former Chancellor Alistair Darling has chosen the Outer Hebrides to mark the “100 days to go” point in the Scottish independence referendum campaign.
His message urging Scotland to stay in the union, will be delivered from the islands where he warned about economic catastrophe following the banking crisis.
Mr Darling will address a public meeting in Stornoway on Lewis on Monday following a major speech in Glasgow as the campaign enters the home strait.
“The campaign to maintain our place within the United Kingdom is reaching out to ever corner of Scotland,” said Mr Darling.
“My personal connection is with Lewis so it seemed the appropriate place from which to send that message.
“All of us are products of various identities – in my own case, my background is shared between Lewis and Edinburgh. I am both Scottish and British. We don’t need to reject any of our identities in order to take pride in all of them.”
He will be joined on the platform by leading Free Church theologian Professor Donald MacLeod and former Labour government minister, Brian Wilson, as well as representatives of political parties and young voters.
It was from his holiday home on Great Bernera in 2008 that the then cabinet minister famously warned in an interview that Britain was facing its worst economic crisis in 60 years,
Mr Darling said then that the economic downturn would be more “profound and long-lasting” than most people had feared.
As Chancellor, Mr Darling sanctioned £37billion bail-outs of RBS and HBoS minutes before their cash machines would have ceased to function.
Mr Darling’s mother, Anna, grew up in Stornoway. The home on Great Bernera has been in her side of the family for many years – dating back to the ex-Chancellor’s great-great-grandfather in the 1850s