First Minister described him as a 'rival' of country and 'therefore an asset to the Yes campaign'

Nigel Farage was described as a gift to Yes campaign after upsetting voters by describing Scotland as 'huge chunk of territory'

Nigel Farage’s visit to Scotland yesterday to campaign for the Union will have persuaded voters to back independence, Alex Salmond claimed last night.

The First Minister said the Ukip leader joining the campaign trail in Glasgow to ask Scots to vote No was a gift to the Yes campaign.

Mr Farage said that he had gone there to win back Labour supporters who had decided to vote for independence.

But before he had even arrived he had upset Scots by describing Scotland as ‘a large chunk of our territory’.

Mr Salmond, who was campaigning in Aberdeen, said Mr Farage was as an asset to the Yes camp.

The SNP leader said there is ‘huge disillusionment with the Westminster system’ and that extended to Ukip’s ‘negative, insular, anti-European brand of politics’.

He added: ‘A lot of people in Scotland have no time for that and therefore Mr Farage is a rival to Scotland and will be an asset to the Yes campaign, and a huge embarrassment of course to the No campaign.’

At a Ukip rally in Glasgow last night, Mr Farage said the Prime Minister had been ‘moronic’ for not putting the option of maximum devolution on the ballot paper along with Yes and No.

He said: ‘I was astonished that the Prime Minister allowed for the separatists to be given the “yes” side of the referendum question.

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‘Far better from his point of view, you would have thought, would have been to have asked the question “Should Scotland remain part of the United Kingdom?”.

‘But no, on this he blundered and more fundamentally he blundered by not offering the Scottish people, the “devo max” option.’

Earlier, Mr Farage had suggested the Queen has a responsibility to speak out and tell Scots to vote against independence.

The First Minister described the UKIP leader's visit as a gift to his campaign, describing Farage as a 'rival' of Scotland and therefore an 'asset' to his crusade

He told radio station LBC: ‘My understanding of the constitution is if the kingdom itself, if the United Kingdom itself is under threat, then in many ways you could argue she has a responsibility to say something.

‘Let’s say we got to this Sunday and let’s say it was still 50-50 in the polls, I personally think she should say something, yes.’ He said English people were feeling ‘ignored’ in the independence debate and argued that the strengthening of the devolution settlement offered by pro-Union parties in the event of a No vote should apply to other parts of the UK, as well as Scotland.

Last night 60 demonstrators gathered outside the Ukip rally and Mr Farage was smuggled in a side door to avoid them.

It overshadowed an event held by Labour last night, which saw party leader Ed Miliband share a platform with former prime minister Gordon Brown for the first time since he left Downing Street in 2010.

Labour peer Lord Foulkes last night said: ‘Farage’s intervention is counter-productive.

‘As always, his ego comes before the cause.’

Friday night in a Glasgow distillery...were we in for a bit of a stooshie? ROBERT HARDMAN in Scotland

Glasgow city centre of a Friday night. Not exactly quiet pint territory at the best of times.

So the arrival of Nigel Farage – that personification of cocky Englishness – with a blunt message for the Scots could reasonably be expected to generate more heat than light.

We were probably in for what locals like to call a bit of a stooshie. A couple of van loads of police were not taking chances. One or two mouthier onlookers were carted off.

When the Ukip leader came to Edinburgh on the European campaign trail, he was famously set upon by a mob who forced him to seek refuge in a pub.

Last night, he had pre-empted a repeat by booking an entire distillery in advance. Arriving in a big, blacked-out limo, he stepped straight through a back door while a few dozen general-purpose ‘activists’ gathered at the front.

For his trip to Scotland, the UKIP leader had dropped his fag-and-a-pint-of-your-finest routine

The Teacher building has not actually produced any whisky since becoming a chi-chi downtown conference centre in 1991.

But it still boasts peaty old names like the Laphroaig Suite and the Ardmore Room. Of anything resembling a bar, though, there was no sign.

But Mr Farage had dropped the fag-and-a-pint-of-your-finest routine for this trip.

When it comes to his taste in drink and tobacco, he is much closer to Clydeside Man than any other party leader, but his cheeky City trader schtick has very limited appeal north of the Border. And he knows it.

So, after a rumbustious tour of the London radio studios at breakfast time, he came to Glasgow last night with an uncharacteristically sombre speech.

There were few of the usual barbs at Euro bogeymen like Herman van Rompuy. He wasn’t even particularly rude about Alex Salmond.

He was selling a ‘pig in a poke’ and all that. David Cameron had been as ‘arrogant as Edward II at Bannockburn’ in letting Mr Salmond dictate the terms of this referendum.

For all UKIP's bluster about 'Farage Friday' as a 'pivotal moment' in this campaign, it was not

But his central message was that if Scots wanted to control their own destiny, then becoming a ‘small and pretty irrelevant province’ of a German-controlled EU was not the answer.

This rally of 100 activists even heard a pat on the back for the IRA (in contrast to an earlier speaker’s fiery denunciation of the SNP as IRA-supporting ‘scum of the earth’).

‘I absolutely hold no brief for Gerry Adams but at least there is a consistency to his nationalism. He doesn’t want Northern Ireland to be part of the United Kingdom, but neither does he want the island of Ireland to be governed by the bureaucrats of Brussels,’ he said sternly.

‘What Alex Salmond is offering isn’t nationalism on a Scottish level, it is supra-nationalism on an EU level.’ Eh, pal? Deep waters for a Friday night.

The Bank of England would never ever underwrite a Scottish currency, Mr Farage avowed. The English would never buy it. He finished not with a warning, though, but an outstretched hand: ‘It’s your Union, too.’

Outside, there was a weird absence of either Yes or No camps. The latter had wanted nothing to do with Mr Farage. On the basis of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’, the Yes movement were happy to leave him to it.

With 140,000 votes in the Euro elections, Ukip now has a Scottish MEP, a roly-poly, openly gay freight boss called David Coburn.

He led the warm-up with a fabulously off-message press conference. By his own admission, his head was somewhat clogged by a streaming cold.

Vladimir Putin? ‘He is doing a good job for his country.’ Ukraine was all the EU’s fault.

Asked about Ukip’s appeal to women voters in this referendum campaign, Mr Coburn replied: ‘Speaking as a homosexual, I suppose I could give them fashion tips – or advice on their drapery.’