The U.K. government held talks with Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc to ensure British energy companies were "well-placed to pick up contracts in the aftermath" of the invasion of Iraq, according to declassified documents released as part of an official inquiry.
Scotland would now be in “economic trauma” if it had voted for independence in the referendum, former prime minister Tony Blair has claimed.
Mr Blair said the country would have been left trying to negotiate its currency during the oil downturn, meaning “Tory cuts ... would be dwarfed by the SNP cuts necessary to keep the Scottish economy afloat”.
The former Labour leader also described last September’s referendum as a “near-death experience” for the UK in which it came close to being relegated from “the Premier League of nations”.
The SNP said the intervention would simply remind people of Mr Blair’s “toxic legacy” from his time in power.
Mr Blair made the comments as he gave a speech in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, in his former Sedgefield constituency.
