Ex-British Pm: Labour-Snp Alliance 'Recipe For Mayhem'

Former British Prime Minister Sir John Major said Tuesday that a minority Labour Party government propped up by Scottish nationalists would lead to "blackmail" and be a "recipe for mayhem."



During a speech in the West Midlands, the former Conservative prime minister said: "If Labour were to accept an offer of support from the SNP, it could put the country on course to a government held to ransom on a vote-by-vote basis."



The Scottish National Party is a left-wing separatist party whose popularity has risen exponentially in Scotland after a defeated independence referendum on Sept. 18 last year. Its rise threatens the ability of the center-left main opposition Labour Party to form a majority government after the next election on May 7.



A recent poll gave the SNP a 28-point lead over Labour. According to Scottish newspaper The National, if the latest poll was converted to seats the SNP would take 56 of Scotland's 59 seats and Labour would lose all but two of its Scottish MPs in its traditional heartland.



The prospect of a minority Labour government propped up by Scottish nationalists has become the focus of the ruling center-right Conservative Party's campaign.



While Labour have repeatedly ruled out a formal coalition with the SNP, they have not ruled out a looser confidence-and-supply agreement, where the SNP would back Labour's budget in return for concessions on other policy issues.



"Labour would be in hock to a party that – slowly but surely – will push them ever further to the left... We would all pay for the SNP's ransom in our daily lives – through higher taxes, fewer jobs and more and more debt," said Major, who was prime minister between 1990 and 1997.



"At the very moment our country needs a strong and stable government, we risk a weak and unstable one – pushed to the left by its allies, and open to a daily dose of political blackmail."



'Affront to democracy'



Major's last Scotland secretary, Lord Forsyth, however, told the liberal-left Guardian newspaper that the Conservatives "want to be the largest party at Westminster and therefore some see the fact that the nationalists are going to take seats in Scotland will be helpful. But that is a short-term and dangerous view which threatens the integrity of our country."



Both Forsyth and Major campaigned against the creation of a Scottish parliament in the 1997 general election, which Labour brought in soon after they won under Tony Blair.



Lord Steel, the leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats' predecessor, the Liberal Party, agreed with his fellow peer.



"Michael Forsyth is correct that the Tories (Conservatives) are really doing the SNP a favor by bringing them to the center-stage of the campaign," he told BBC Radio 4.



In a sly political maneuver, he brought up the Conservatives' own past with the nationalists.



"In fact, Michael Forsyth is also right to remind them that it was the Conservatives who supported the minority SNP government in the Scottish parliament and saw them through four years of government, so they have a track record here," he said.



He dismissed a formal coalition between Labour and the SNP, saying: "The idea that having killed off a lot of MPs the Labour party's going to embrace them (the SNP) in Westminster is in the realm of fantasy."



Speaking on the BBC Breakfast program Tuesday morning, Labour leader Ed Miliband said Conservative leader David Cameron "should be taking on a nationalist party as I am doing."



"David Cameron should not be talking up a nationalist party in order to try and get them to do well in Scotland to take votes off Labour to try and crawl back into Downing Street," he said.



SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, speaking at a campaign event on Tuesday, responded forcefully to Major's intervention.



"Some of the comments we're hearing in the media this morning from politicians like John Major are actually an affront to democracy," she said.



"These are politicians who last year urged Scotland to lead the U.K., not leave the U.K. These comments suggest they only think we should do that when we're prepared to say what they want us to say and vote how they want us to vote."



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