PM BLASTS SNP’S RECORD ON SCHOOLS

THERESA May will today accuse Nicola Sturgeon of neglecting Scottish education to go on constitutional manoeuvres. The Prime Minister, left, will tell the Scottish Conservative conference in Glasgow that the SNP’s 10-year stewardship of Scottish education has been nothing short of a “scandal”. By taking on Sturgeon on the single issue the First Minister asked voters to judge her premiership on, May will aim to divert the debate away from a second referendum. But she arrives in Scotland as a ticking Brexit time bomb means Sturgeon could be just weeks away from calling for another independence vote.

May will use her conference speech to drive home her economic message that the UK market is far more important to Scotland than the EU one.

But her main guns will be aimed at the SNP’s failures in government.

In a blistering attack on the party’s education record, the Prime Minister is expected to say: “Scottish schools, which once led the world in setting the highest standards of attainment, are now outperformed in every category by schools in England, Northern Ireland, Estonia and Poland.

“Education has been fully devolved since 1999 and under the SNP’s stewardship for 10 years. But standards have fallen, the attainment gap remains and Scottish young people are losing out.

“And just this week we have learned that the SNP Government have delayed their planned Education Bill, such is their obsession with the single issue of

independence. The SNP’s neglect and mismanagement of Scottish education has been a scandal.”

Earlier this week, Sturgeon warned a second independence referendum was being foisted on Scotland because of the Tories’ approach to Brexit.

Last night, she again accused May of “intransigence” over her plans to leave the EU.

Sturgeon added: “If the Prime Minister thinks she can come to Scotland and sermonise about where power should lie, in the manner of one of her Tory predecessors, she should remember this – her Government have no mandate in Scotland, and no democratic basis to take us out of Europe and the single market against our will.”

Glasgow City Council leader Frank McAveety also attacked May.

The Labour politician said: “Glaswegians will never forget the devastation the Tories inflicted on Glasgow.

“Theresa May will today deliver her speech in a city that has the largest growing economy outside London. That has been achieved despite the hardship caused by her party’s austerity measures.”