SALMOND HOLDS ED TO RANSOM

SNP chief boasts he would dictate a first Labour budget He wants £180bn spending spree to ‘end austerity’ HS2 rail line would have to start north of border – not London

ALEX Salmond vowed yesterday to hold a Labour minority government to ransom to secure a £180billion debt-fuelled spending spree. Scotland’s former first minister boasted that an SNP landslide at the General Election would allow him to dictate Ed Balls’s first Budget as Chancellor – and demand that he ‘end austerity’.

Mr Salmond also declared construction of the HS2 rail line would have to start in Scotland and Britain’s nuclear defences be scaled back.

With polls pointing to a hung Parliament and the SNP on course to win dozens of seats from Labour, he said of last year’s independence referendum: ‘We haven’t lost after all. If you hold the balance, then you hold the power.’

Tory Defence Minister Anna Soubry told him he had delivered one of the ‘scariest interviews’ in modern political history.

Boris Johnson increased pressure on Labour to rule out any post-election deal with the SNP, which is predicted to take as many as 50 of Scotland’s 59 seats, up from six in 2010.

‘Labour would be drawn to feed the beast,’ he said. ‘That’s what they have always done. They have created the problems by trying to appease Scottish Nationalism. They have endlessly encouraged it rather than taking it on.’

The Conservative Mayor of London called himself an ‘absolutely fervent unionist’ and

said he was ‘very worried’ the SNP was deliberately stoking resentment against the Scots in the rest of the UK. He condemned Labour for vowing to use a new levy on expensive homes in the South East of England to pay for public services north of the border.

‘I was appalled by what [Scottish Labour leader] Jim Murphy had to say about despoiling London and the South East with property taxes in order to pay for Scotland,’ Mr Johnson said. ‘That’s not going to promote good relations’.

With polls suggesting the SNP could hold the balance of power at Westminster – and fears a deal with Labour could break up the Union – Mr Miliband finally bowed to pressure from senior colleagues last week and ruled out a formal coalition with the Nationalists.

But he has refused to reject a ‘confidence and supply’ deal, which would see the SNP guarantee to vote for key legislation in the Commons in exchange for concessions. More likely still is the SNP negotiating with a minority Labour government on a vote-by-vote basis.

When asked by the BBC’s Sunday Politics yesterday, Mr Murphy declined six times to rule out such an arrangement.

Mr Miliband will today travel to Scotland in a desperate bid to shore up votes, stepping up his warnings that an SNP surge would risk keeping David Cameron in power.

The latest poll suggests Labour is failing to stem the Nationalist tide, with the SNP 21 points ahead on 47 per cent.

The Conservatives last night unveiled an animated campaign video, featuring Mr Miliband dancing a jig as Mr Salmond ‘calls the tune’.

Speaking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, the former first minister said he would work with Plaid Cymru and the Green Party in a ‘progressive’ alliance.

He suggested the SNP could support a minority Labour government on a vote-by--

‘Chaos for the country’

vote basis even if it refuses to scrap the Trident nuclear deterrent, a previous ‘ red line’ issue. A ‘ tartan bloc’ at Westminster would ‘move the Labour Party in a different direction’, Mr Salmond said.

‘I think there are lots of people – certainly lots of people in Scotland, but I think people across these islands – [who] are pretty fed up with the duopoly at Westminster and might want to see politics a bit more interesting, where parties have to work for their votes and justify things on a vote by vote basis,’ Mr Salmond added.

Asked if Ed Balls would have to negotiate his Budget with the SNP, Mr Salmond replied: ‘Yes, any minority government has to negotiate in order to win a majority for its proposal. That is patently obvious. To deny that is to deny reality.’

One of the SNP’s many demands is to delay plans to tackle Britain’s deficit by spending an extra £180billion over five years on the country’s credit card. Treasury chiefs have warned that it would drive up debt.

Challenged to explain how he would respond to Mr Balls if Labour told him ‘where to go’, Mr Salmond said he would demand that the Scottish phase of the HS2 rail line be built first, rather than the London section.

‘Let’s say, for example, instead of this very, very slow fast-rail coming up from London, I think we should start [building] it from Edinburgh or Glasgow to Newcastle and I put that down as a Budget amendment,’ he said. ‘It would have substantial sup- port in the North of England from the other parties and will carry the House of Commons. What does Mr Balls do then?’

Later, he told Sky News’s Murnaghan programme: ‘What I think is possible is a confidence and supply arrangement where we have a limited number of objectives and in return we would vote for Budgets.

‘More probable is a vote-by-vote arrangement. We would move, or attempt to move, the Labour Party away from signing up to the Tory austerity agenda.’ Miss Soubry said the possibility of Mr Salmond controlling a Labour government filled her with ‘absolute horror’.

She told the Andrew Marr Show: ‘That was one of the scariest interviews I’ve heard for a very long time … absolutely terrifying.’

Confronting Mr Salmond directly, she added: ‘The audacity is astonishing. There was a wonderful debate in Scotland – you lost it. We are a united kingdom; that is what the people of Scotland wanted.’

Ukip leader Nigel Farage said he was not concerned by Mr Cameron’s rejection of any Tory-Ukip deal, adding: ‘I still believe the Conservatives will be the biggest party, not least because Alex Salmond’s party is doing so well in Scotland.

‘And I think between Ukip and possibly the DUP in Northern Ireland there will be a body of MPs to have significant influence and to force a referendum on our EU membership [earlier than planned].’

Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps said: ‘Thanks to Labour’s collapse in Scotland the only way Ed Miliband will get to Downing Street is if he does a grubby deal with Alex Salmond.’

He added: ‘In every vote … weak Ed Miliband would dance to Alex Salmond’s tune – it would cause chaos for the country.’

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