Scottish nationalists pledge to resist UK spending cuts

SNP ultimately wants Scotland to become independent. It won 56 of 59 Scottish seats in the Westminster Parliament after campaigning on an antiausterity platform.

Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon said on Tuesday her party would seek to resist UK- wide public spending cuts planned by Britain’s newly- elected Conservative government, saying they would harm the economic recovery.

Ms Sturgeon’s party, the SNP, ultimately wants Scotland to become independent and won 56 of 59 Scottish seats in the Westminster Parliament on May 7 after successfully campaigning on an antiausterity platform.

It had been hoping to team up with centre- left Labour to pursue this agenda. But Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives — who promised billions of pounds of spending cuts to reduce the deficit — won an outright majority.

Ms Sturgeon, who is also Scotland’s First Minister, said Scots had voted for neither austerity nor the Conservatives in large numbers. And with its highest number of elected lawmakers, she said the SNP would try to block Conservative plans to erase Britain’s budget deficit primarily through spending cuts. “We will continue to oppose spending reductions of the scale and speed that the UK government has suggested. These would slow economic recovery and make deficit reduction more difficult,” Ms Sturgeon said.