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Nicola Sturgeon: ‘My message to people in other parts of the UK is that the SNP can be your allies.’
Nicola Sturgeon: ‘My message to people in other parts of the UK is that the SNP can be your allies.’ Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
Nicola Sturgeon: ‘My message to people in other parts of the UK is that the SNP can be your allies.’ Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

SNP will be a 'progressive ally' to rest of the UK, says party leader

This article is more than 9 years old

Nicola Sturgeon insists the SNP – predicted to win a landslide in Scotland – will be a positive and constructive force in the Commons

Nicola Sturgeon says her message to people across the UK is that they have a progressive ally in the SNP, at the end of a week in which the former first minister, Alex Salmond, threatened to “exploit Labour weaknesses” if his party held the balance of power after May’s general election.

Speaking on Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme on Friday, Sturgeon insisted that the Scottish National party would be a “positive and constructive force” in the Commons.

“My message to people in other parts of the UK is that, as long as Scotland is still part of the Westminster system, then the SNP can be your allies.”

In an interview ahead of the SNP’s largest ever campaign conference in Glasgow this weekend, she said: “I know there are many people in other parts of the UK who are as disillusioned with the Westminster establishment as Scotland is and we can build progressive alliances with our friends in other parts of the UK.”

Asked about Salmond’s comments to the Spectator during the promotion of his memoir about the referendum campaign, Sturgeon said: “Alex Salmond is a member of the SNP, I’m the leader of the party.”

She added: “Alex has said nothing that I’m not also saying. We’re articulating a message about how good it could be for Scotland if the SNP is in a position to wield influence in the House of Commons.”

Reiterating that she would not go into coalition with the Tories and that a formal coalition with Labour is highly unlikely, Sturgeon said: “We could have an arrangement akin to confidence and supply and if we couldn’t do that, we would seek to use our influence on a vote-by-vote basis.”

Borrowing Scottish Labour’s phrasing, which it has used to suggest that a vote for the SNP would increase the chances of another Tory government, she added: “It’s a matter of simple arithmetic. If there are more anti-Tory MPs in the House of Commons than Tory MPs than it would be possible to lock the Tories out of government.”

With polling consistently predicting an SNP landslide in May, the Guardian’s latest figures earlier this week suggested Sturgeon’s party could take 43 of Scotland’s 59 seats.

Admitting that current polling made it difficult to manage expectations, she said: “I’m very mindful of the fact we have six MPs now; in the remaining seats in Scotland we face hefty majorities, the most MPs the SNP has ever had in the Commons is 11 so anything beyond that would be record-breaking for the SNP, so I am mindful of the mountain we have to climb.”

But she added that she placed no limit on the SNP’s ambition and that the party would be “fighting every seat to win”.

“Anybody who watched the so-called debate with David Cameron and Ed Miliband last [night] will have seen very powerfully why these two parties have their lowest combined share of the vote in living memory. There’s nothing to choose between them: they both want deeper spending cuts, they both want to renew Trident, they offer nothing of passion and principle.”

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