We’ll frighten the life out of Westminster: Sturgeon’s shock vow to smash the system
SNP leader in pledge to axe House of Lords
NICOLA Sturgeon yesterday controversially vowed to smash the entire British political system if the SNP secures major gains at the General Election.
Despite leading a Scottish party and a Scottish Government, the First Minister put Westminster reforms and a series of issues reserved to London at the heart of her election campaign.
The SNP leader announced a package of contentious policies designed to create revolutionary change at Westminster as she insisted that her party can win every one of Scotland’s 58 seats in May.
She pledged to fight for the abolition of the House of Lords and announced that she would try to overthrow a minority Tory Government – even if the Conservatives are the biggest party.
She also vowed to fight to take a possible Labour government to the Left at Westminster as she set out a package of policies that she wants to force on Ed Miliband.
The leading pledges in her keynote speech at the SNP’s spring confer- ence yesterday all related to matters reserved to Westminster, including the minimum wage, NHS privatisation in England and the constitution.
Speaking to 3,000 SNP members at the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre in Glasgow, Miss Sturgeon said a party that ‘frightens the life out of the Westminster establishment’ is ‘good news for ordinary people in Scotland and right across these islands’.
She added: ‘We challenge a parliamentary system that has more members in the unelected House of Lords than in the elected House of Commons. What a democratic outrage that is.
‘And we rail against a cosy consensus that hits the poor with the bedroom tax and benefit sanctions, while turning a blind eye to the tax avoidance of the super-rich.
‘So, yes, David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, if you are worried that a strong SNP is a threat to all that is deeply undemocratic and unfair about the Westminster notion of democracy, then all I can say is this: you had better believe we are.’
With its focus on Left-wing issues, the speech was designed to appeal to Labour voters in Scotland. Miss Sturgeon said that the SNP would fight to increase the UK minimum wage by £2, to £8.70, by 2020.
She also vowed to abolish the House of Lords, seen by many as a critical safeguard against bad legislation forced through by a majority UK Government. ‘The House of Lords has no place in a democratic society,’ she said. ‘The House of Lords, which was voted for by no one, recently tried to stop 16 and 17 year-olds getting the vote in Scotland. Its members are paid £300 a day for just showing up, and it’s totally tax free. That’s got to stop. Friends, people with no democratic mandate should not be writing the laws of the land. It is now time to abolish the House of Lords.’
Her advisers said the SNP may support an elected second chamber – but insisted that the priority was to abolish the House of Lords first. The First Minister also echoed recent pronouncements by Alex Salmond that the SNP would vote down a minority Tory government, despite a long-standing tradition that the party with the most MPs should always get the first opportunity to form an administration.
‘The SNP will never put the Tories into government – not now, not ever,’ she said. ‘And you won’t be letting the Tories in the back door either. As there are more anti-Tory MPs – Labour or SNP – than there are Tory MPs in the House of Commons, we can keep them out of government.
‘I know Labour can’t admit this. After all, the “vote Labour to keep out the Tories” line – however detached from reality it might be – is the last remaining plank of their desperate and failing campaign. But it is a matter of simple arithmetic. If there are more anti-Tory than Tory MPs after the election, the only way the Tories get back into power is if Labour lets them back in. So in the interests of total clarity, let me make this promise today: if there is a hung parliament, SNP MPs will vote to stop a Tory Government even getting off the ground.’
Ed Miliband has insisted that he will not do a post-election Coalition deal with the SNP.
But he has refused to say he wouldn’t favour a ‘confidence and supply’ agreement with the Nationalists, in which he would call on their support on key issues in return for agreeing to carry through some legislation favoured by the SNP.
Miss Sturgeon yesterday attempted to bully the Labour leader into doing a deal, saying that agree-
‘We’ll never put Tories into government’
ing to let the Tories take power rather than working with the SNP would be ‘the final nail in the political coffin of Scottish Labour’.
Despite the primary goal of the SNP being independence, Miss Sturgeon barely mentioned the issue, making only one fleeting reference to how Scotland didn’t vote to break up the UK ‘this time’.
Instead, she wants those who backed either side in the referendum to vote SNP to ‘make Scotland’s voice heard’ at Westminster. She added: ‘If you want a Labour government to have backbone and guts, you need to elect SNP MPs to provide it for them.
‘And if you want a Labour government that won’t just be a carbon copy of the Tories, but will instead deliver the real change Scotland needs, then you must elect SNP MPs to force Labour’s hand and keep them honest.’
Europe Minister Humza Yousaf got rapturous applause from delegates – most of whom had joined the party since the referendum – by saying: ‘We believe more than ever before that independence will come. For anyone that believes that independence is dead – believe me, independence is coming. And it’s coming for a’ that.’
But, speaking in Edinburgh yesterday, former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown attacked the SNP in his first major appearance in Labour’s General Election campaign.
Referring to a pledge by Miss Sturgeon to offer the hand of friendship to ‘progressive’ people across the UK, he said: ‘I know that this means to offer the right hand of friendship to keep the left hand free to deliver the knockout blow to break Britain apart.’
Tory chairman Grant Shapps said: ‘It is clearer than ever that the prospect of Ed Miliband, in Downing Street and dancing to Alex Salmond’s tune, would mean chaos for Britain.’
Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy said: ‘Despite all the cheering and back-slapping the facts remain that only Labour or the Tories can form the next UK government.
‘Any seat taken from Labour by the SNP or anyone else simply helps David Cameron to stay in power.
‘If you want change and you want a change of government then Labour is that change. The only way to get a Labour government is to vote Labour.’