LEONARD: SNP ARE PARTY OF CUTS
SCOTTISH Labour leader Richard Leonard will try to convince UK party members the SNP are a party of “austerity”.
The pitch comes after UK leader Jeremy Corbyn refused to rule out giving consent for a second independence referendum if he were prime minister.
Leonard will make his case against the SNP and independence at the Labour conference in Liverpool, which gets under way tomorrow.
Leonard will warn the SNP’s “growth commission” on independence comes with cuts.
“It offers a vision of Scotland that people do not want and cannot afford,” he will say.
“A vision of another decade ruined by needless austerity, with people living, surviving, struggling under the dogma of another deficit reduction plan.
“The cuts commission claims to offer a clearsighted analysis of the prospectus for independence but it is a prospectus based on a hard decade of public spending contraction, and even deeper cuts than those implemented by George Osborne.”
Leonard will share the stage with ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband tomorrow.
Tories said Leonard should “stand up to Jeremy Corbyn” by ruling out another indyref.
SNP MSP James Dornan said: “Scottish Labour seem to have forgotten that it was the last Labour government which started imposing austerity – which they pledged would be deeper than anything Thatcher imposed.”