UK PM warns Scottish independence would be 'painful divorce'

Britain's prime minister David Cameron delivers a speech at the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre in Aberdeen, Scotland on September 15. Reuters

ABERDEEN // British prime minister David Cameron warned during a visit to Scotland on Monday that if the country voted for independence from the UK, it would not be a “trial separation” but a “painful divorce”.

“There is no going back from this, no rerun. This is a once-and-for-all decision,” he said in Aberdeen in by far his most forceful speech to date ahead of Thursday’s referendum.

“Head, heart and soul, we want you to stay,” he said.

Mr Cameron said a “Yes” victory would endanger Scottish pensions and the currency Scots use, break up the armed forces and put up borders between England and Scotland that “may not be so easily crossed”.

He said Scotland’s pro-independence government had outlined a future that was “too good to be true”, adding: “I don’t want the people of Scotland to be sold a dream that will disappear.”

A “Yes” victory would be “the end of a country that all of us call home and we built this home together,” he said.

* Agence France-Presse