The people of northern England can rest easy, Alex Salmond has insisted he has no plans to annex the north of England should Scotland achieve independence.
Asked on Tuesday whether a newly independent Scotland would try and place Cumbria and Northumberland under Edinburgh's control, the Scottish first minister said he was making "no territorial demands" of London. "The boundaries of Scotland and England which were dispute are actually [some of the] longest standing boundaries on Earth," he said.
Salmond was speaking during an event hosted by the Wall Street Journal in New York. While he said Scotland would not try and seize England's two most northern counties for himself, the SNP leader did say he thought they got the "worst deal" from Westminster.
And he suggested close cooperation between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle could create an "economic powerhouse" that did not "depend on territorial ambitions".
So David Cameron and the people of northern England do not need to start re-enforcing Hadrian's Wall just yet.