More dirty deals in the air as Sturgeon anti-Tory plot grows
‘Plot to unseat Jeremy Hunt’
SIGNS of rival parties forming an anti-Tory movement that could help put Jeremy Corbyn into Downing Street were growing last night.
It came as the Conservatives, in their first campaign poster of the election, warned of a ‘coalition of chaos’ between the SNP, Labour and the Lib Dems.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has already been accused of plotting to install Mr Corbyn as prime minister in exchange for getting a second referendum on Scottish independence.
And fears that an alliance of Left-wing parties could unite to stop Theresa May returning to power increased sfter the Greens wrote to Mr Corbyn and Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron yesterday to offer electoral pacts.
In more than a dozen Tory held seats, Labour or the Liberal Democrats would win if all those who voted Green at the last election switched their vote.
Molly Scott Cato, Green MEP for southwest England and Gibraltar, said the party’s co-leaders Jonathan Bartley and Caroline Lucas have written to Mr Corbyn and Mr Farron to urge them to consider agreements on tactical voting ‘to move beyond the tribal politics of the past and cooperate for the sake of the country’.
She told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘We’re waiting to hear what the response is. Theresa May has given us an opportunity [by calling the snap election]… but to use that opportunity we need to co-operate as parties of opposition who don’t want that Tory future.’
While she said a national agreement was unlikely, she suggested the parties could form local deals to thwart the Tories.
The Greens have said they are willing not to put up a candidate in Plymouth Sutton & Devonport, which the Tories held with a majority of just 523, to try to ensure a Labour victory.
At the last election the Greens received 3,401 votes there, meaning Labour would win comfortably if all these switched.
Other seats where the Tory majority is smaller than the number of Green voters at the last election include St Ives, Bath, Eastbourne and Twickenham, which are all being targeted by the Lib Dems.
Labour would snatch Brighton Kemp- town, Derby North, Croydon Central, Morley & Outwood, Bury North, Weaver Vale, Bedford and Telford if all Green voters switched to them.
The Tories yesterday warned in their first election poster there would be ‘higher debt, higher taxes and economic chaos’ if the SNP and Lib Dems helped Mr Corbyn into power as part of a ‘coalition of chaos’.
Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson said Miss Sturgeon had offered a ‘ progressive alliance’ between the SNP and Labour because Mr Corbyn has said he would be ‘absolutely fine’ about staging another independence vote.
She told the Scottish Parliament: ‘ The First Minister’s very first intervention in the election has been to say that she would put Jeremy Corbyn in No 10. Is that because, uniquely, the First Minister sees in Mr Corbyn the wisdom, the foresight and the leadership skills that are needed in a Prime Minister, or could it possibly be because, in his own words, Jeremy Corbyn is “absolutely fine” with another referendum on independence?’
But Miss Sturgeon wrote off the Labour leader’s chances of becoming Prime Minister, either by winning a majority or with the help of her party, describing the possibility as ‘pie in the sky’.
She told MSPs that opinion polls showed Mr Corbyn ‘ain’t going anywhere near No 10 Downing Street on his own or with the help of anybody else’.
Labour has insisted that it will not sign an electoral pact with other parties, but activists in Surrey last night suggested they could back the Lib Dems locally in an attempt to unseat Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt. The Constituency Labour Party in his South-West Surrey seat said it had been canvassing support for a ‘progressive deal’ for the past 18 months.
Fresh speculation about how the SNP, Lib Dems and Greens could help Labour get
back into power will be damaging for the party, which suffered at the last election after Miss Sturgeon offered a similar deal.
The Tories plastered billboards with posters showing Miss Sturgeon playing puppet-master to Ed Miliband, as well as the then Labour leader in the pocket of the SNP’s Alex Salmond.
Meanwhile, a report published yesterday showed more than half a million Scottish jobs depend on trade with the rest of the UK.
The research conducted by the University of Strathclyde’s Fraser of Allander Institute found there were 528,707 jobs in Scotland that were supported by exports to other parts of Britain in 2013.
This was more than four times the 125,206 jobs that were linked to trade with the rest of the EU.
The Tories have opened up a 24point lead over Labour. A YouGov poll for The Times put the Tories up three points on 48 per cent, Labour on 24 per cent, the Lib Dems on 12 per cent and Ukip on seven points.