Sturgeon demands ‘legitimacy’ test

NICOLA Sturgeon last night talked up the prospect of a pact between Thursday’s election losers, as she claimed the next government cannot simply be ‘the largest party in England’.

In Dumfries, the First Minister said a new ‘legitimacy test’ should be introduced at Westminster.

She added: ‘Westminster is supposed to be the parliament and the government for the whole of the UK. It often hasn’t felt that way for Scotland as we have had to put up with Tory governments that we have rejected. I am sure parts of England have felt exactly the same.

‘So surely a test of legitimacy that should be applied to whatever Westminster government is formed after this election cannot simply be that it is the largest party in England. The test that must be applied is whether a government can build a major- ity and win support that reflects the whole of the UK.

‘English MPs will always be the largest part of any Westminster majority, but to ignore Scottish voices would be wrong.’

At the last General Election, more than 850,000 Scots voted for the two coalition parties – around the same number as backed the SNP in the 2011 Holyrood contest.

IF you thought the SNP had reached ‘peak hubris’ when its leader began flying around in a helicopter emblazoned with her face, campaigning in an election for which she is not even standing, hold on.

Nicola Sturgeon’s latest hostage to fortune is her assertion that the next government must have UK-wide legitimacy and cannot simply be formed by the largest party in England.

Once again, she is touting her party as kingmakers (based on legions of Nationalist MPs who have but one, as she sees it, minor hurdle to overcome – going to the voters on Thursday).

While there is nothing in the constitution that says the largest party’s leader has to be PM, David Cameron is said to be preparing to declare victory if he wins the most seats and votes.

He could seek to negotiate another coalition with the Lib Dems, and possibly Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party too.

So much for Nicola holding the reins of power in that scenario.

But Miss Sturgeon is banking on Labour using her mercenary band to seize 10 Downing Street.

That could see Labour wiped out in Scotland; losing in England; not standing in Northern Ireland; and winning only in Wales – and yet the SNP would somehow enthrone Ed Miliband as PM.

While that would be a constitutional possibility, the public would be rightly sceptical of the viability and legitimacy of a government with a losing PM propped up by a party dedicated to ending our 300-year-old Union.

And Miss Sturgeon is already wagging a metaphorical finger at the Tories and lecturing on legitimacy.

She should consider the fate of the ‘Feeble 50,’ the cohort of Labour MPs sent south with great fanfare in 1987, intent on holding Margaret Thatcher’s feet to the fire.

They ended up sidelined and Miss Sturgeon’s ‘Phantom 50’ could yet end up as impotent bystanders, knitting their brows and nursing their wrath on the Westminster benches, grumbling about a democratic deficit and achieving nothing but antagonising a great many of their own countrymen and constituents.