SNP ‘hijacking local elections for Indy vote’
Party’s record is branded ‘appalling’
THE SNP has been accused of ‘hijacking’ the local elections by trying to turn them into a proxy independence referendum.
SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon yesterday admitted she has no qualms about encouraging voters to focus on issues unrelated to the upcoming council elections when they cast their ballot.
With Scotland’s opposition parties focusing on local issues ahead of the May 5 council poll, the SNP launched its campaign bus with a call for voters to ‘send a message to Boris’.
Miss Sturgeon said she was happy for the ‘strong and advancing’ case for independence to dominate the campaign despite the local elections having little relevance to the constitutional argument.
Her remarks were criticised by the Scottish Conservatives, who accused the First Minister of using independence as a way of distracting voters from the SNP’s ‘appalling’ record in government and running councils.
The SNP leader also rejected accusations her government was undermining local democracy by centralising power at Holyrood and cutting council budgets.
Speaking at the launch of her party’s diesel-guzzling election bus, emblazoned with a photo of the First Minister and the slogans ‘Send Boris a message’ and ‘Ease the squeeze’, Miss Sturgeon insisted she still planned to hold another referendum by the end of next year.
Asked about portraying the upcoming vote to elect councillors as a verdict on the Union, she said: ‘Politicians like me can encourage people to vote on particular grounds and clearly my campaign bus is doing that, but people will choose how they want to vote for the reasons they want to vote. In any election, part of any voter’s motivation is going to be to send a message and give a statement about the kind of country they want Scotland to be.’
Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross said: ‘Nicola Sturgeon will use every single vote cast for the SNP in this election as another reason to try to break up Britain.
‘They are hijacking a local election campaign to focus on an issue that isn’t on the ballot paper. The SNP won’t campaign on local issues because their record is so appalling.’
Despite real-terms cuts to councils’ core budgets, everincreasing ring-fencing of money and instructions on how to spend it, Miss Sturgeon denied that the SNP was reluctant to devolve power to local communities.
She said: ‘With some of the powers that we have devolved to councils, we’ve seen other parties who don’t want to leave it to councils but who want the government to decide these things.’
The SNP leader was also challenged about comments from Green minister Patrick Harvie who suggested a ‘significant number of highprofile people’ in her party were transphobic.
Mr Harvie said the SNP should have taken disciplinary action against members who have been ‘promoting transphobia’, but that the issue has been ‘allowed to fester’ instead.
Miss Sturgeon said: ‘The SNP, like the Scottish Green Party, stands very, very firmly against transphobia.’
SCOTTISH Labour has been mocked amid claims it used pictures of Edinburgh flats in its Glasgow manifesto. Photos of a street believed to be in the capital’s Polwarth area were used to illustrate the party’s Glasgow-specific policies, including a pledge to hire 250 street cleaners and bin collectors for the city.
Sharing images that indicated they were of Edinburgh tenements, Nationalist MP Stewart McDonald tweeted: ‘Only Labour can publish a manifesto for Glasgow full of pictures of Edinburgh flats.’
Scottish Labour was approached for comment.