Cameron: Salmond says he will write next Labour budget

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/22/cameron-salmond-labour-budget-snp-alliance-election

Version 0 of 1.

David Cameron has intensified his warnings of an SNP-Labour alliance after the election, tweeting footage of the former Scottish National party leader Alex Salmond joking that he will be writing the next Labour budget.

Salmond responded by telling the prime minister to get a sense of humour, since he had simply been making a light-hearted point that Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy would not be playing a role in writing the document.

Hours earlier, Cameron had likened Salmond to a pickpocket on ITV’s This Morning.

The Conservative party has also released attack adverts showing Miliband in Salmond’s top pocket and depicting him as a puppet with Sturgeon pulling the strings.

In a message accompanying the film of Salmond from an SNP candidate event on 13 April, Cameron wrote: “This footage will shock you: Alex Salmond laughs & boasts he’ll write Labour’s budget. Vote Conservative to stop it.”

At the event, Salmond, who hopes to be elected to Westminster again as MP for Gordon, said: “The Labour financial secretary said on the Andrew Neil programme famously that the Scottish Labour leader will not be writing the Labour party budget. But then, I knew that already because I’m writing the Labour party budget. I’ll just check my top pocket. Oh, it’s me! I’m in the top pocket.”

This footage will shock you: Alex Salmond laughs & boasts he’ll write Labour’s budget. Vote Conservative to stop it. https://t.co/A6DGJtM8OM

In response, Salmond said Cameron should “try holding a few public meetings and meeting real people – and develop a sense of humour” instead of having a few carefully stage-managed appearances.

“The point made in a light-hearted way was that Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy had been slapped down by his party bosses at Westminster and told that he would have no role in a Labour budget,” he said. “David Cameron is clearly a prime minister with both a people bypass and a sense of humour bypass.”

Salmond also responded separately to the prime minister’s throwawaycomment on ITV’s This Morning comparing him to a pickpocket.“The Tories have been picking Scotland’s pocket for years, and havebeen well and truly rumbled, which is why David Cameron and the restof the Westminster gang are sinking like a stone in Scotland,” theformer first minister said.

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, also replied to Cameron’s Salmond video tweet, saying: “If you want to ask who’s going to write Labour’s first Queen’s speech, who’s going to write Labour’s first budget, it’s the Labour party not the SNP.”

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has taken the lead during the campaign so far, offering to work with Labour to make it “bolder” and offering to lock Cameron out of Downing Street.

However, Salmond also made a reappearance at an event in Aberdeen on Wednesday, where he said everybody in the SNP “has a broad smile at the moment” because the party’s campaign is being caught alight by the prospect of “having real influence for the first time since the 1970s in the Westminster parliament”.

Miliband has categorically ruled out a coalition with the SNP, saying “thanks but no thanks” to Sturgeon’s offers of help to lock the Tories out of Downing Street.

Last month, the Labour leader also dismissed Salmond’s claims that the SNP would hold the balance of power in May and force a new government to end austerity with £180bn of extra public spending.

At the time, Miliband said: “I’ll tell you who is going to be writing the Labour budget, it’s me and Ed Balls … It’s not going to be Alex Salmond, not in a million years.”

Sturgeon has since made it clear she would not “torture” a Labour minority government if the parties were in alliance and would find ways of being constructive without bringing it down.

However, the Conservatives seized on the footage as evidence that the SNP secretly believes it would wield significant power over Miliband as prime minister.

Cameron’s message on Twitter is yet another example of that strategy as the Conservatives hope voters in England will be put off the idea of a Labour minority government relying on SNP MPs to pass legislation.

The prime minister has repeatedly warned of an Labour-SNP deal this week, saying it would be a “match made in hell”, as he comes under pressure over Britain’s role in failing to stop migrant deaths in the Mediterranean and the latest allegations about his party chairman, Grant Shapps.