SNP ARE A PALE IMITATION OF LABOUR SOCIALISM
JEREMY Corbyn last night urged Scots to back Labour and not settle for the “pale imitation” of the SNP.
The Labour leader turned his fire on Nicola Sturgeon during a campaign visit to Scotland in which he tried to convince left-leaning Scots that only his party could take on the Tories.
The SNP effectively replaced Labour as the party of choice in vast areas of urban Scotland at the 2015 general election when 40 Labour MPs lost their seat to the Nationalists.
But on his first campaign visit to Scotland, Corbyn said only Labour were interested in “transforming the economy” and attacked the SNP’s record in government.
“Why vote for a poor imitation that has overseen an increase in child poverty and the biggest increase since devolution of those people classified as poor despite being in work, when you can have the real thing in the progressive Labour Party,” he asked activists in Dunfermline.
“Remember this is not a referendum, it’s a General Election and only Labour can form another government and offer an alternative that will transform the lives of Scots.
“Scotland and the UK are being held back; only by voting Labour on June 8 can we change our country so it is run for the many, not the few.”
Corbyn was campaigning in Scotland just one day after a series of opinion polls suggested Labour remain in third place north of the Border.
The party are well behind the second-placed Conservatives, with the Scottish Nationalists continuing to hold a large lead over their rivals.
But Corbyn insisted he
was fighting to win the election, pledging his party would offer an “economic and political alternative” to the Conservatives.
Corbyn stopped short of directly attacking the SNP in an earlier visit to the Scottish Trades Union Congress in Aviemore.
But he did urge trade unionists to focus on who they want to form the UK Government when casting their vote on June 8.
“The truth is that the Tories and SNP are obsessed with their power struggles against Brussels and Westminster when the energy should be used to change and transform our economy to ensure no one and no community is left behind,” he said.
He also outlined a series of left-wing election pledges that proved popular with the trade unionist audience, including scrapping the Tory Trade Union Act.
But Sturgeon said Labour’s position across the UK meant Corbyn has no chance of being prime minister.
“Labour is in a weaker position than it has probably been in my lifetime,” the SNP leader told journalists in Aviemore.
“I’m not saying that with any sense of glee, just as a statement of fact.
“We’ve seen in the last two years Labour’s inability to stand up to the Tories on the question of Brexit, just falling into line with the Tories. Not just on Brexit but a hard Brexit.
“[We’ve seen] the inability to pick up on and really chase down some of the flaws in Tory budgets, the inability to put forward a coherent opposition to austerity.
“People only have to look at the shambles Labour has been in over the last two years to know that if the SNP hadn’t been there, there would have been no real opposition to the Tories.” ●THE Tories’ post-election VAT rise would cost the average family nearly £2500 over the next parliament, new figures show.
Analysis of Treasury figures shows the 2.5 per cent hike being considered by Chancellor Philip Hammond would cost a family with two kids at least £450 a year.
The rate is currently 20 per cent.
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: “It’s the tax bombshell that the Tories are planning for low and middle earners.”