LIE 1: SCOTLAND

‘We won’t do a deal with the SNP. We are not going to have a Coalition’

ED Miliband’s declaration was intended to blunt attacks over the prospect of the SNP holding a minority Labour government to ransom.

In reality, it is disingenuous nonsense. He only ruled out a formal coalition or ‘confidence and supply’ arrangement.

The SNP could still prop up his government vote by vote – just what Nicola Sturgeon wants.

Mr Miliband would ask the SNP to vote with him on a Queen’s Speech or Bill, which it would in return for more cash in Scotland. On occasion, no deal would be reached – but that would not free the UK from being held captive by Scottish Nationalists.

The Fixed-Term Parliaments Act states two-thirds of MPs have to vote to trigger an early election.

So the SNP could vote down legislation without it being seen as a vote of no confidence – turning Mr Miliband into its play thing.

The Nationalists have already suggested there will be no highspeed rail network unless it begins in Edinburgh. As Philip Collins, an ex-aide to Tony Blair, said yesterday: ‘Minority government is nothing but deals.’

One further option is open to Labour, in the likely event that it is reliant on SNP votes to form a government. (Polls suggest it will pick up about 270 seats, with 323 required for a majority. The SNP, expected to win 50-plus seats, is the only smaller party that could get Labour over the line.)

Mr Miliband could decline to become Prime Minister – allowing the Tories to remain in power. On Thursday, under fire from the BBC’s Question Time audience, he suggested he might do this rather than give in to the SNP.

But does anyone believe him? Not only would letting the Tories back into Downing Street be the final nail in Labour’s Scottish coffin, it would run contrary to all we know about a man so obsessed with getting into Number Ten that he knifed his own brother.

Labour has no way out of this bind. Mr Miliband cannot stop the SNP voting in support of his first Queen’s Speech – which would contain many shared Left-wing policy commitments.

Once he is installed in office, the Scottish Nationalists could torture Labour – and the rest of the UK – to its heart’s content.

JAMES SLACK

HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR