Alex Salmond has been accused of acting like former North Korean dictator Kim-Jong Il by blaming the BBC's coverage of Ukip for getting their first MEP in Scotland at the European Elections
Alistair Darling, leader of the pro-unionist Better Together campaign, launched a vicious attack on Salmond, branding his attack on the BBC a "North Korean response".
He told the New Statesman: "This is something that Kim Jong-il would say. And this is the same BBC for which we all pay our licence fee, and we all enjoy the national output as well as the Scottish output."
Our experts photoshopped Kim Jong-Il as Alex Salmond
Darling also hit out at the "culture of intimidation" towards anyone who opposes Scotland breaking away in September's referendum, saying: "People in business are frightened to speak out."
He added: "I haven’t been threatened – they wouldn’t threaten me – but if you are a member of the public and you are trashed for having your say, what do you do? You stop it. No one wants to live in a country where this sort of thing goes on."
In response to Darling's attack on Salmond, SNP MP Peter Wishart wrote on Twitter that it looked like the former Labour chancellor "has totally lost it".
Salmond made his attack on the BBC as the European election results came in, giving Ukip enough votes to see David Coburn elected their first MEP for Scotland.
"It's difficult it is to stop a party getting foothold. We've been doing an analysis of BBC broadcasting in Scotland over this month, four times as many broadcasts about Ukip than the SNP," the First Minister said.
He told the BBC's election night programme: "Star Trek the Original series used to have a phrase, 'beam me up Scotty', Ukip is a party that gets beamed into Scotland courtesy of the BBC."
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