Kezia: Labour in SNP ‘power plot’

LABOUR has refused to block a second Scottish independence referendum because it needs SNP support to stand any chance of getting into power, according to Kezia Dugdale.

The former Scottish Labour leader said she thinks it ‘looks very unlikely’ that Jeremy Corbyn would secure enough votes in a general election to become Prime Minister.

She said that shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s statement last week that a Labour government would not block a demand for Indyref 2 shows he is plotting a ‘path to power’ that includes winning the support of the SNP. It came as shadow education secretary Angela Rayner backed Mr McDonnell’s stance on a rerun of the 2014 vote.

At an event at the Edinburgh Fringe yesterday, Miss Dugdale criticised Mr McDonnell’s comments, adding: ‘Just how that looks is what is so bad about it.’

Asked by interviewer Matt Forde whether a minority Labour government would strike a deal with the SNP in return for an independence referendum, she said: ‘Oh, 100 per cent, and I predicted this.

‘If you are looking at the electoral map, because you have to, and you are John McDonnell, who is a very smart and astute man by the way, you have to work out what your path to power is.’

In another attack on Mr Corbyn, Miss Dugdale said that she believes Labour’s decision to withdraw legal support for her defence against a defamation case by nationalist blog Wings Over Scotland was ‘politically motivated’ by those on the Left of the party.