The historic battle for the future of Scotland's place in the United Kingdom began formally as the Scottish National Party set out an audacious strategy to win power in the first Scottish parliament for nearly 300 years.
Mr Alex Salmond, the 44-year-old economist who has led the SNP for nine years, has embarked on a high risk strategy for the May 6th ballot of promising higher tax than the Labour Party and also being strongly critical of the NATO action in Yugoslavia.
Having faced flak for describing the bombings as "unpardonable folly" in an official broadcast statement last week, he used the campaign launch in Edinburgh yesterday to back Mr John Bruton's initiative on a ceasefire, urging the British government to give it full consideration.
Although the SNP remains firmly committed to a referendum on independence within the first four-year term of the Scottish parliament, its 10 election pledges published yesterday put independence as lowest priority. Instead, the party is flying in the face of conventional political wisdom by featuring its promise to reinstate a one penny in the pound tax cut made last month by Chancellor Mr Gordon Brown.
The "Penny for Scotland" campaign attempts to place the SNP to the left of Labour as the party of public services, with £230 million sterling per year of additional spending for schools, hospitals and housing. This is in addition to a £50 million per year promise to abolish student tuition fees, which were introduced last autumn for the whole of the UK.
The stress at yesterday's campaign launch was on the choice between "A penny for Scotland", or London Labour's "tax bribe", in an attempt to portray the governing party as under the tight control of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his team.
Labour, which was due to launch its campaign this morning, brought its counter-attack forward by a day, having latched on to a campaign theme intended to stress the costs of "divorce" from the UK. This must be the first time in political history that a separatist party tried to hide its separatist intentions - a single plank party trying to hide its one plank, claimed Mr Donald Dewar, the Scottish Labour leader.
Although the SNP has only six seats in the House of Commons, and Labour has 55, the SNP surged in the polls, peaking last summer 14 points ahead of Labour. But recent polls have shown a very clear lead opening up in favour of Labour. However, in a new proportional voting system, it is likely no party will have overall control, making it likely that the Liberal Democrats could hold the balance of power.
Rachel Donnelly adds: Launching its latest slogan promising "a new beginning for Wales" the nationalist Plaid Cymru party fired the first shot in the campaign for the Welsh Assembly elections which began yesterday, claiming public support for the party was the highest in its 75-year history.
The Plaid Cymru president, Mr Dafydd Wigley, warned Labour the election campaign would not be a one-horse race. "We have made up tremendous ground since the general election," he said, "and have fully established ourselves as the only credible alternative to Labour in Wales."
Recent opinion polls show that Plaid Cymru is gaining popular support in Wales. It has steadily increased its support among voters from 10 per cent at the election in May 1997 to 29 per cent on the latest figures.