SNP wants Tories in power in Westminster, Gray tells conference

Published on Monday 22 September 2008 10:18

SCOTTISH Labour leader Iain Gray today told the party's UK conference in Manchester that the SNP is out to get David Cameron into Downing Street.

He claimed Alex Salmond and his colleagues had an explicit strategy to help the Tories to win control at Westminster because they believed they could gain from that.

He told delegates: "The Nationalists want the Tories to win the next general election. They are working actively to try and make that happen." He also said the struggle Labour faced in Scotland was the same it faced in the rest of the UK.

He said: "When I was a teacher in the early eighties, I saw the Tories drain the hope, the spirit from a generation of young people – sure they would never have a job, that society had no place for them, that there was no point in even trying. We must never let that happen again."

Mr Gray said

being in opposition hurt, not because of loss of status, but because they could no longer do what they wanted to do for the people they represented.

He told the conference: "Some have suggested that we sleepwalked into the 2007 loss. If we did, we are wide awake now."

As speculation about Gordon Brown's long-term future continues, Mr Gray said the party had to unite behind the Prime Minister and take the fight to the Tories and the SNP.

He said the events of the past week had demonstrated why Mr Brown was the best person to lead not just the Labour Party but also the country – without his intervention, HBOS could have collapsed completely.

Mr Gray also told delegates Labour was now the only force for fairness in Scotland.

Mr Gray's address to the conference in Manchester came as a new survey of marginal seats showed Labour losing 11 Westminster seats in Scotland at the next general election.

The PoliticsHome survey included Edinburgh North & Leith, which it said would go to the SNP, and Edinburgh South, which it gave to the Tories.

However, if the 14.5 per cent swing to the SNP suggested by the finding was extended beyond the marginal seats, it would mean the SNP also winning Edinburgh East, Midlothian, East Lothian and Linlithgow & Falkirk East, while Chancellor Alistair Darling would only just manage to hold on his seat in Edinburgh South-West.