Section:OBS NS PaGe:1 Edition Date:120115 Edition:05 Zone: Sent at 15/1/2012 1:26 cYanmaGentaYellowblack

‘Th e downsides of independence are immense, the risks are amazing’Alistair Darling interview, 10-11A chance to build a modern, confi dent state Observer Comment, 44If Scotland becomes a sovereign, mature nation, England gains tooNeal Ascherson, in Comment, 45

by Toby Helm and Daniel Boff ey

The Scottish people will take a “massive risk” with their economic future if they vote for independence, former chancel-lor Alistair Darling warns today .

In an interview with the Observer , Darling says that if the Scots vote to leave the 300-year-old union and then keep sterling, adopt their own currency, or join the euro, the country will be plunged into unparalleled economic uncertainty. “The downsides are immense, the risks are amazing, the uncertainties I just don’t think are worth gambling on, Dar-ling said. “There are times when you should gamble and there are times when you shouldn’t.”

He said that the world was now in a period of deep economic trauma and

by John Hooper Porto Santo Stefanoand Tom Kington Rome

The Italian captain of the ship that sank off the coast of Tuscany was last night detained by prosecutors as eff orts continued to search for the missing .

Three people were confi rmed to have died and 41 were still unaccounted for after the 114,000-tonne Costa Concordia smashed into rocks near the island of Giglio .

Authorities said that Francesco

Schettino, 52, who has worked for the owners of the cruise liner for 11 years, was being investigated for manslaughter and abandoning his ship . Prosecutor Francesco Velusio was quoted as saying that the vessel “was mistakenly close” to the island on a route ordered by Schettino through well-mapped sea lanes.

There was speculation that a power failure on board the ship could have led

to a loss of navigational control, send-ing it smashing into the rocks. Experts said that passengers report ed a power blackout and a large blast, which may have indicated an explosion in the engine room.

The ship came to rest half sub-merged on its side, yards from Giglio late on Friday . There was anger among the thousands of passengers who had swum or been ferried and fl own to safety over what they described as a botched evacuation by crew members who panicked. Italian police con-fi rmed that two French tourists and a Peruvian crew member had died in the accident. About 30 people were reported to have been injured, with three remaining critical .

Costa Crociere, the cruise operator, said that all 25 British passengers and 12 British crew on board were accounted for, but a British embassy offi cial was unable to confi rm the fi gure.

Survivors described panic, confusion and fear as the ship began to list heavily following what sounded like a loud explosion. “Have you seen Titanic? That’s exactly what it was like for us,” said Valerie Ananias, 31, a school-teacher from Los Angeles travelling with her sister and parents.

Kirsty Cook, one of eight British dancers working on the ship, said that she was “lucky to be alive” after using a

rope ladder to climb down to a rescue boat. Another dancer, Rosie Metcalf, 22, from Dorset, had to cling to a fi re hose before being winched to safety by a helicopter crew.

The Costa Concordia, which was built in Italy and launched in 2006, set off from Civitavecchia on Friday for a Mediterranean cruise, carrying 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew. As the ship slid between Giglio and the coast, passengers sitting down for their fi rst dinner on board felt a shudder before the lights went out.

Despite an announcement that the ship had suff ered no more than an elec-trical failure, diners became suspicious as their drinks began to tilt on the tables in front of them . Schettino said

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Darling tells Scots of huge economic risk from UK split

Independence vote ‘would backfi re’ ■

Publish secret studies, Treasury told ■

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�rantic search for missing passengers as ship�s captain held after �uscany tragedy

The Costa Concordia lies half submerged off the island of Giglio late yesterday. Survivors told of a chaotic evacuation, claiming that the crew were at first unwilling and then unable to launch lifeboats as the ship started to list heavily. Photograph by Enzo Russo/EPA

shock that would probably endure for many years. It was clear that Scotland’s future would be more secure at such a time as part of the United Kingdom.

If Scotland retained sterling, as Scot-tish fi rst minister and SNP leader Alex Salmond has suggested would happen in the event of a vote for independence, Darling said it would fi nd itself in a mini-version of the eurozone, unable to set its own interest rates, tax rates, or spend-ing policies.

“This is precisely the argument that is being engaged in the eurozone at the moment,” he said. “If you have a single currency area [for sterling] you come back to having an economic if not a polit-ical union [with London].

“So you go through all the trauma

and expense of leaving the union, only to come back and discover that because you want to be part of this common cur-rency you are back to where you were. I just don’t see the sense of that.”

Darling spoke out following a week in which the issue of Scottish independ-ence has shot to prominence after David Cameron demanded last weekend that Salmond come clean over his plans for a referendum. The former chancellor, who correctly predicted the depth of the current economic downturn in 2008, rejected suggestions that he should lead the “no” campaign before the refer-endum, which Salmond says will take place in 2014. But he said he would play a prominent part in highlighting the dangers to Scotland of a split at a time of huge economic uncertainty made worse by the problems of the eurozone.

If Scotland were to go down another route and adopt its own new currency it would also be taking a gamble of incalcu-lable proportions because no one could be certain of the currency’s value on the launch date, Darling said. “You would be a brave country indeed to say, here is our new currency. We are not actually sure how much it is going to be worth after the fi rst day’s trading. It would be one hell of a risk.”

Equally, splitting off from the UK and then joining the euro would bring eco-nomic risk and mean less independence rather than more, as the Scottish budget would be monitored by Brussels and interest rates set in Frankfurt.

Yesterday fears about the impact of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis deepened after ratings agency Standard & Poor’s stripped France and Austria of their coveted AAA rating, and down-graded seven other eurozone member states. The agency’s move came 100 days before the fi rst round of the French pres-idential election, when Nicolas Sarkozy is expected to seek a second term.

The prime minister, François Fillon , said a downgrade had been expected but

Francesco Schettino, captain of the stricken cruise ship, was taken into custody yesterday.

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