Deal or no deal, Labour’s SNP headaches are just beginning

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/02/nicola-sturgeon-support-ed-miliband-long-term-loser

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Even six months ago it would have been a laughable proposition. The Conservatives, once the butt of the joke that there are more pandas in Scotland than Tories, may end up with more MPs north of the border than Labour.

A nationalist tsunami, with the SNP successfully marketed as both more Scottish and Labour than Scottish Labour itself, could deliver a total wipeout of Ed Miliband’s party in Scotland. The SNP now stands at 54% in the polls compared with Labour’s 20%. The Tories are quietly confident about picking up three Scottish seats.

Whatever the final result, the SNP will not only be a major factor in whether Ed Miliband is to be prime minister but a major cause of Labour’s longer-term problems across the UK should it form a minority government.

“Miliband promised he wouldn’t do a deal with the SNP. And that’s absolutely right – he doesn’t need to,” said one Scottish Labour insider. “He just needs to present a Queen’s speech and ask parliament to vote in favour of it, and the SNP will support it because they won’t vote down a Labour government in favour of a Tory one.

“But the SNP will say it is a deal whether it is or it isn’t. And whenever they support Labour policy they will say it is a deal. They’ll make him a liar, no matter. And that will be Labour’s long-term disaster.”

It is this prospect that prompted a series of Labour figures over the past 48 hours to attempt to finesse Miliband’s Question Time proclamation that he was “not going to have a Labour government if it means deals or coalitions with the SNP”.

Andy Burnham, Labour’s health spokesman, said this weekend that the party would “of course” have a dialogue with the nationalists, while Caroline Flint, the shadow energy secretary, suggested the parties could make informal arrangements.

Henry McLeish, a former Scottish first minister, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday morning: “I can’t bind Ed to anything but, look, you know well enough that the pragmatic political side will say: ‘I’m going for a majority: all this talk of speaking to anyone is out of the question’. On the other hand, the politics of reality say I would rather see Ed Miliband in No 10, no matter the conditions. At the end of the day, Ed is not going to exclude himself from being prime minister by not talking to anyone.”

The finessing has not gone unnoticed by the Conservatives. The suggestion of Labour being “propped up” by the SNP in the Commons has worked well on the doorsteps in persuading the undecideds that David Cameron should be returned as prime minister. And on Friday Michael Gove, the Tory chief whip, was quick to reinforce the message. “One of the most senior figures in Ed Miliband’s party is openly admitting that he will end up doing deals with the SNP,” he said.

“The reality is – vote by vote, issue by issue, day by day – the SNP will extract concession after concession from Ed Miliband as they hold him hostage in Downing Street. It will mean higher debt, higher taxes and higher mortgage rates for working people, putting our economy at risk.

“There’s only one way to guarantee the strong, stable majority government our economy and our country need – voting Conservative next Thursday.”

Cameron pressed the issue on Saturday: “If you want to avoid a Labour government propped up by the SNP – which is not just a possible outcome, but frankly a very possible outcome because Labour can’t cross the line on their own – if you want to avoid that because, like me, you worry about having the government being held to ransom by a bunch of people that don’t want our country to succeed, indeed they don’t want our country to exist, then the answer is to vote Conservative,” he said.

Miliband may well squeeze his way into Downing Street. And do it without a deal. But that could just the start of Labour’s problems.