Osborne queries currency for independent Scotland George Osborne, chancellor, last night opened an attack on what he believes is a glaring weak spot in Alex Salmond's plan for an independent Scotland: the question of whether it would use the euro or the pound. Mr Salmond says Scotland would initially use the pound but joining the euro remained a "long-term possibility." Mr Osborne believes Mr Salmond's position will fall apart under scrutiny in an independence referendum, which the Scottish first minister wants to hold in the autumn of 2014. Mr Osborne refused to say whether the rest of the UK would agree to a currency union with an independent Scotland, telling ITV News: "All these issues are going to be fleshed out now and flushed out. The SNP is going to have to explain what its plans are for the currency of Scotland. The SNP's longstanding support for an independent Scotland in the European Union has implied euro membership, which is a prerequisite for new EU members, subject to a referendum. Mr Osborne said last night that Scots would ask themselves "is that a currency you want to be joining at the moment?" Mr Salmond's Unionist opponents - Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats - believe the first minister has been forced into an unsustainable position because of the eurozone crisis and collapse in support for the euro in Scotland. Danny Alexander, Treasury chief secretary, also believes Mr Salmond is deluded if he thinks Scotland could have a common currency with England, Wales and Northern Ireland while pursuing a totally independent fiscal policy. Mr Alexander argues that such thinking has been exposed by the eurozone crisis, which he says has shown that the inexorable logic of monetary union is closer fiscal union. If an independent Scotland decided to retain the pound, it could take two separate courses. The first would be to seek a currency union with the rest of the United Kingdom, but that would be contingent on the rest of the UK agreeing. Mr Alexander says: "The SNP view that you could have total fiscal freedom where you tax and borrow as you please - and run as big a deficit as you please - and that is no concern to the rest of the UK is wrong." Scottish independence would be curtailed in the likely event that England insisted on some say on Holyrood's budgetary policy - just as Greek and Portuguese budgets are now tightly constrained under eurozone fiscal rules. The other course would be for Scotland to carry on using the pound without the consent of the rest of the UK, effectively surrendering monetary policy to London. That would leave Scotland entirely at the mercy of a policy set by the Bank of England for the rest of the UK in which Scots had no say and which took no account of economic conditions north of the border. A YouGov poll published in the Sun found support for independence had increased to 33 per cent, 4 percentage points higher than last May, while opposition to independence had fallen from 58 to 53 per cent.