Yesterday’s, 19th April, Sunday Politics show, heard an admission by Angela Eagle, Labour’s Shadow Leader of the House of Commons – that Ed Miliband may well do just such a deal with the SNP to get into Downing Street.
Today, Ruth Davidson, the open and plain speaking young Scottish Conservative leader – who is making much of the weather in the Scottish General Election campaign, arrowed in on this statement and its implications.
In a major speech in Glasgow today, 20th Glasgow, Ms Davidson highlights the choice facing Scottish voters on 7th May.
Ms Eagle matter-of-factly presented the political realities as she sees them – saying to Andrew Neil: ‘See what the numbers are…we’ll speak to any party that has got representation in the House of Commons in order to try and build a majority.’
Ms Davidson has seized on this frank admission to point out that it is now clearer than ever that Labour is actively preparing to do a deal with the SNP. She says: ‘The reality of what Scotland is facing is beginning to sink in.
‘Of course Labour is trying to deny it – Ed Miliband has to while Scottish Labour MPs are fighting for their lives.
‘But we know what it is going on. And now Angela Eagle has confirmed it.
‘The moment those Scottish Labour MPs are gone, Ed Miliband will be straight on the phone to Nicola Sturgeon asking for her opening bid.’
Ms Davidson says: ‘Nicola Sturgeon is an accomplished politician.
‘She knows that the best way to win in two weeks’ time is to de-risk the SNP. Thus she tours London’s TV studios pledging to be a constructive and positive partner to people across the UK.
‘Surely it’s time that Labour woke up and realised that the SNP’s first and last priority will always be separation.’
And on Sky News last night, Oliver Duff, Editor of ‘The I’, who has interviewed Ms Sturgeon recently, reported that she told him ‘We will continue to do everything in our power to achieve independence’.
Yesterday, on yet another day when Ms Sturgeon did indeed ‘tour London’s TV studios pledging to be a constructive and positive partner to people across the UK’, Ms Davidon’s challenge is lucid and indisputable. She says:’If Nicola Sturgeon really wants to prove her constructive credentials, there’s a test she has to meet.
‘It’s to accept – right now, before the election – that the United Kingdom is staying together for the next generation, in line with her own pledge and in line the decision made by the people of Scotland last year.’
What Mr Sturgeon is actually doing is continuing to play the sophist game of making statements that are quite literally true but whose underlying meaning is disguised by the emphatic mode of their delivery.
The First Minister declared in the national press today ‘I have made clear that I am not planning another referendum’.
Indeed she has made it clear. Indeed she is not planning another referendum – at the moment.
She has made it very clear that this General Election is not about another referendum – but its result will be.
She has said that she has not yet begun to write the SNP manifesto for the 2016 Scottish Election, while, on two different occasions, choosing to say ‘that is another matter’- on whether that election would be the point for an SNP push for indyref 2.
If Ms Sturgeon wishes to dispute this analysis of her veiled communication, all she has to do is say what Ms Davidson suggests above that she should. The Scottish Conservative Leader asks: ‘How can people all across the UK possibly be asked to believe a leader who claims to have the interests of a country at heart which she still wants to break up?’
In the meantime, while Ms Sturgeon was touring the TV studios and Angela Eagle was coming clean with Andrew Neil, there were flat contradictions from some of each of their senior colleagues.
Ed Balls said unequivocally to the cameras that Labour will make no compact of any kind with the SNP – but Ms Eagle’s no-nonsense pragmatism had a greater air of truth.
Ms Sturgeon’s SNP Deputy Leader Stewart Hosie MP, gave an interview to today’s Telegraph, threatening overtly that if the SNP did not get their way with Labour they would block defence spending at Westminster, seeing vital kit for soldiers and operational equipment going unordered. This is the authentic SNP modus operandi.
Mr Hosie was noted for the enthusiasm with which he took up and repeated the vicious metaphor beloved of Alex Salmond, that the SNP would ‘hold Westminster’s feet to the fire.
And, from the official ‘leaks’ as to what Ms Sturgeon has put in the SNP manifesto for the General Election which she will launch today, in launching SNP policies for the entire United Kingdom she will speak effectively as the Prime Minister of the UK.
This may sound delusional but it does not sound like the tone to preface the unequivocal renunciation of indyref 2 for a generation for which Ruth Davidson is calling.
