JK Rowling gives £1m to anti-independence campaign for Scotland

Harry Potter author JK Rowling is hoping to sprinkle some magic over the Scottish independence referendum by donating £1m to the campaign to keep the UK together.

Ms Rowling, who lives in Edinburgh, said she was against Scottish independence even though she was “no fan of the current Westminster government”.

“My hesitance at embracing independence has nothing to do with lack of belief in Scotland’s remarkable people or its achievements,” she wrote in a post on her website

“The simple truth is that Scotland is subject to the same twenty-first century pressures as the rest of the world. It must compete in the same global markets, defend itself from the same threats and navigate what still feels like a fragile economic recovery.

“The more I listen to the Yes campaign, the more I worry about its minimisation and even denial of risks.”

The donation by Ms Rowling, who is a friend of Alistair Darling, head of Better Together, is the largest so far to the No campaign. It is dwarfed, however, by the £5.5m given by lottery winners Chris and Colin Weir to the Yes campaign.

Recent polls show that voters think the Yes campaign has been much more effective than Better Together, although the latest surveys suggest the No camp is still ahead by about 54 per cent to 36 per cent, with 10 per cent undecided.

Better Together has been warning for months that it is being heavily outspent by the Yes campaign led by Scotland’s first minister Alex Salmond, ahead of the September 18 vote.

Ms Rowling continued: “Whenever the big issues are raised – our heavy reliance on oil revenue if we become independent, what currency we’ll use, whether we’ll get back into the EU – reasonable questions are drowned out by accusations of ‘scaremongering’. Meanwhile, dramatically differing figures and predictions are being slapped in front of us by both campaigns, so that it becomes difficult to know what to believe.

In depth

Future of the union

Scotland will decide in a referendum to be held on September 18 2014 whether or not to end the 307-year-old union with England

“If we leave, though, there will be no going back. This separation will not be quick and clean: it will take microsurgery to disentangle three centuries of close interdependence, after which we will have to deal with three bitter neighbours.

“I doubt that an independent Scotland will be able to bank on its ex-partners’ fond memories of the old relationship once we’ve left. The rest of the UK will have had no say in the biggest change to the Union in centuries, but will suffer the economic consequences.”

A spokesman for Yes Scotland, the pro-independence camp, said: “While we may disagree with her views, we of course completely respect JK Rowling and her right to express her opinion on the referendum and donate to the No campaign.

“And while we do not agree with her choice, we can all agree with her strong point that if the majority of people in Scotland do vote Yes, then she truly hopes that it is a ‘resounding success’.”