Ed Miliband to summon up ghosts of Labour's past to try to avoid SNP rout
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Version 0 of 1. Ed Miliband is to call on Scottish voters to remember the titans of the Labour movement, from Gordon Brown to Keir Hardie, after firmly ruling out any deal with the Scottish National party in the last of the TV election events before polling day. In a final effort to prevent a Scottish National party landslide, the Labour leader will urge the party’s traditional voters to remember their heritage and family loyalty. Related: Ed Miliband: I won't have Labour government if it means deals with SNP Miliband will join Jim Murphy, the Scottish Labour leader, in Glasgow on Friday as part of a 24-hour tour of England, Wales and Scotland to emphasise his commitment to scrapping the bedroom tax. The Scottish leg is the most significant after the Labour leader made it clear in Thursday night’s Question Time interview that he was not prepared to compromise with the SNP. In effect challenging Scottish voters to risk another Tory government, Miliband said: “I just want to repeat this point to you: I am not going to have a Labour government if it means deals or coalitions with the SNP. I want to say this to voters in Scotland.” Miliband will be hoping that his bold pitch for a Labour-only government will bring some Scottish voters back to the fold out of fear for another Conservative government. However, his outright refusal to work with the SNP could risk alienating others in his base who are attracted by Nicola Sturgeon’s claim to be more leftwing than Labour. Reacting to Miliband’s tough line, the SNP leader said on BBC Scotland Question Time: “I heard Ed Miliband and he sounded awfully like he was saying – and I hope I’m wrong about this because I think people across Scotland and the rest of the UK would be appalled if I’m right – he sounded as if he was saying that he would rather see David Cameron and the Conservatives back in government than actually work with the SNP. “Now, if he means that, then I don’t think people in Scotland will ever forgive Labour for allowing the Conservatives back into office. But if he is a minority government, then he will not be able to get policies through without winning support from other parties.” Labour’s election chief, Douglas Alexander, who is at risk of losing his own seat to the SNP, said those in Scotland who wanted a Labour government needed to vote for Labour, not the SNP. He also brought up the Sun’s endorsement of the Tories in England and the SNP in Scotland, suggesting both parties were helping each other. “Why do you think the English edition of the Sun says vote Tory and the Scottish edition says vote SNP. Why does Nicola say vote SNP in Scotland, Green in England and Plaid Cymru in Wales? Her strategy seems to be: vote anyone but Labour for a Labour government. “There isn’t a shortcut to a Labour government … What we have to avoid is David Cameron walking back into Downing Street with Nick Clegg or Nigel Farage,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. But despite Miliband’s insistence there would no deals, Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, indicated a minority Labour government would “of course” have to talk to minor parties like the SNP in order to get its business through the House of Commons. “Parties talk in the House of Commons about government business, that’s what happens – all parties talk,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live. In his Glasgow speech, Miliband will characterise a vote for the SNP as a gamble. “And remember – throughout history, it’s Labour values that have changed Scotland. Nationalism never built a school. It never lifted people out of poverty,” he will say. With a series of polls giving the Tories a narrow lead at UK level and the SNP a huge lead in Scotland, the loss of dozens of Labour’s 41 seats in Scotland would make it extremely hard for Miliband to secure a workable minority government. Using an appeal to the party’s Scottish roots frequently used by his predecessor, Brown, Miliband is expected to say: “Imagine all the people you know who have built Labour in Scotland – your grandparents who fought for their rights in the shipyards and mines across this country; your mums and dads, many of whom delivered leaflets for Labour or knocked on doors.” Referring to several former Labour leaders and the veteran Independent Labour party MP Jennie Lee, he will add: “And remember our great leaders. From Keir Hardie to Jennie Lee. John Smith to Donald Dewar. What would they want today? We could be on the verge of electing a Labour government.” The SNP has made substantial inroads in Labour’s heartlands since Sturgeon took over as party leader on a centre-left progressive platform designed to win over urban Labour voters and exploit disillusionment with Miliband. With Sturgeon now on a helicopter tour of Scotland to pep up activists, her party is poised to win dozens of once impregnable Labour seats after building on the support it won in the independence referendum. Miliband’s efforts to cast a Labour vote in a positive light comes after Scottish party strategists began pushing a more negative attack message, focusing on uncertainty over the SNP’s stance about staging a quick second independence referendum. Sturgeon accused Labour of a “desperate last throw of the dice” after being challenged at Holyrood to repeat her pledge last year that a referendum was a “once in a lifetime opportunity”. But she refused to rule one out at first minister’s questions, despite insisting it was not on her agenda at this election. Labour has latched on to comments from a number of SNP election candidates such as Natalie McGarry, standing in Glasgow East, who said “we’ve got to wait to see the result of this election” before deciding on a second poll. Jim Sillars, the former SNP deputy leader with a strong following among older party members, told the Daily Telegraph he believed a referendum would be on “line one” of the party’s manifesto for the 2016 Holyrood elections, before being gently slapped down by Sturgeon. In an effort to salvage seats by winning over wavering Tory and Lib Dem supporters, Scottish Labour’s final campaign poster featured a road sign offering voters the choice between “Labour’s fairer economy” and “another SNP referendum”. Pressed several times by Kezia Dugdale, Scottish Labour’s deputy leader, to state emphatically that no new referendum would be called in the next parliament, Sturgeon accused Dugdale of “desperate scaremongering”. The first minister insisted the SNP’s only objective at this election was to strengthen Scottish influence at Westminster. The “great heroes of the Labour movement must be turning in their graves right now” at Labour’s negativity, she said. “Let me make this quite clear: I have the greatest respect for Jim Sillars, but the clue is in the title: ‘former deputy leader of the SNP’. I am the current leader of the SNP, so let me say this clearly once again. This election is not about independence or a referendum; it is about making Scotland’s voice heard and then using that strong voice at Westminster to stand up for progressive politics and to argue for an end to austerity, protection for our public services and the investment in our economy that we need to get people into jobs.” |