Truss will work to expose ‘incompetent’ SNP regime
LIZ Truss will take apart the SNP and expose why Scotland is failing under its ‘incompetent regime’, said one of her most senior supporters.
Ex-Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said a UK Government run by Miss Truss would ‘want the world to know Scotland is suffering’ under SNP rule.
He said that Nationalist MPs should be forced to answer questions about performance in devolved areas in the House of Commons and that Holyrood should get greater powers to interrogate the SNP.
The comments signal there will be a sea change in the approach the UK Government will take to Scotland if Miss Truss becomes the Prime Minister next month. It comes as
‘The truth is, it is a disaster’
her campaign in Scotland secured another boost today after former Scottish Secretary David Mundell revealed he is backing her.
Writing in today’s Scottish Daily Mail, Mr Mundell said Miss Truss is a ‘child of the Union’ who has already shown she will deliver for Scotland and will ‘hold the SNP to account and face down their threats’.
Speaking to Tory members at a rally for Miss Truss in Stirling, Sir Iain said the ‘Union is in my blood and I believe it is in hers’.
On what her approach to dealing with Nicola Sturgeon will be, he said: ‘I don’t want to ignore her.
‘But what I want to do is to let the world know just exactly why Scotland is suffering so much under this incompetent regime at Holyrood. The truth is, it is a disaster: everything from health to police, now the railways. They can’t even build a ship sometimes on time and on budget – this goes on. So the key question is – we don’t ignore, what we do is we take apart. And we must talk more about the Union.’
He said Miss Truss agreed with him that changes are needed to the approach to the Union. He said: ‘What we have to do now is make the focus about the Union.
‘But the key is we need to get below the surface of just this idea about “are you for or against the Union” and actually come down and ask the question, just exactly what is going on in Scotland to make life here more difficult than it is in other parts of the Union?
‘Don’t we need to examine what a government is doing when given the powers to do it, but spends its whole time blaming somebody else for the problems they themselves have caused?’
He also said he plans to discuss with Miss Truss a proposal to ‘turn the tables’ on the SNP and force its MPs to face a ‘question time’ session in the Commons because ‘they’re not just SNP protesters down in Parliament, which is what they do most of the time. They are actually part of the Government’.
Sir Iain said the SNP ‘has to be accountable’ for the devolved powers it has and there must be more power at Holyrood to ‘interrogate’ the Scottish Government. He said: ‘The weaker scrutiny up here has allowed the Nationalists to get with it.’
On the suggestion her party’s MPs should face questions in the Commons, SNP deputy Westminster leader Kirsten Oswald said: ‘This is an utterly ridiculous suggestion, showing even the Tories are out of ideas for how to fix the broken Westminster system.’