Iain Gray: SNP weakened our cuts defence

Now we know the harsh reality and our worse fears have been confirmed. The Tories spending review will cost Scotland 100,000 jobs.

If that is not bad enough, Scotland's defence against Tory cuts has been weakened by the SNP.

The last person we should now be listening to on how we face these cuts is Alex Salmond as he is guilty of leaving Scotland in such a vulnerable position as George Osborne wields his axe.

Even before Chancellor stood up at the dispatch box yesterday, Scotland had overtaken the rest of the UK when it came to unemployment.

In such a state we now we face a Con-Dem coalition hell-bent on repeating the same mistakes as Margaret Thatcher and every community in Scotland is going to suffer the consequences.

However not only Labour, but a wide range of economists predict these cuts are too fast and too deep.

They are also driven by Tories seizing the opportunity to cut the size of the state with no regard for the consequences.

Let there be no mistake, the Tories would be cutting even if there was no deficit - that is why many of them came into politics in the first place.

As for ordinary families across Scotland, they will now pay the price for Tory ideology.

People should also be aware this is not just an assault on the public sector. Last week, Price Waterhouse Cooper reported that 50,000 public sector jobs would go, stressing that it would have a knock on effect in the private sector with the same amount of job losses. The respected Fraser of Allander Institute warned it could be even more.

What particularly worries me is the Scottish government's response and the First Minister's priority.

For ordinary peoples it's jobs, for Alex Salmond it is independence. It just shows how out of touch he is with ordinary people.

Economic growth and jobs should be at the top of his agenda but due to the Salmond Slump we have lost 50,000 construction jobs as the SNP cut off the pipeline on capital projects.

The Nationalists have also cut 3000 teachers and 4000 NHS jobs. All this happened against the background of record Scottish budgets that grew by 1bn every year for the last three years.

It should also not be forgotten the SNP inherited 1.5 billion in reserves that Labour deliberately left for hard times, but instead of fixing the roof when the sun was shining he has frittered the money away on such vanity projects as the National Conversation.

If this is how Alex Salmond and the SNP handle the Scottish economy in good times, God forbid what would happen in the tough times ahead.

It has also become increasingly clear the SNP also do not have the right to speak for Scotland - they teamed up with the Tories earlier this year to cancel the Glasgow Airport Rail Link and with it the loss of 1,500 jobs that would be so vital at a time like this.

As Scotland slipped behind the rest of the UK due to the Salmond Slump, a series of independent reports and analyses have shown that the Tory - Lib Dem government's plans will impact greatest on Scotland and hit the poorest in our society most.

David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee has warned that Scotland is particularly vulnerable to the coalition cuts saying it would "probably kill off 1.5 million jobs, but especially in places like Scotland".

The damning report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies concluded that George Osborne's budget is "clearly regressive", dispelling claims it is "progressive", and will hit families on the lowest incomes hardest.

The report said that the poorest 10% of households will see a cut equivalent to 21.7% of their income, while the richest 10% will suffer a cut of just 3.6% - the poorest households will be hit six times harder than the richest.

The Tories and Lib Dems have dug an unemployment pit and are consigning a generation to it by kicking away the ladders of welfare support.

The Scottish Parliament now has to rise to the challenge it was founded to meet, to combat the right-wing ideology of a government that believes unemployment is a price worth paying.

Growing and transforming our Scottish economy with a relentless and dogged pursuit of new jobs will be the purpose of a Labour government elected next May.

The last three and a half years of SNP government have left us weak with no money left to spend and with every economic indicator falling behind the UK where we had led the rest of the country in 2007.

Our focus now has to be what matters to people, not obsessing over the fantasy of independence.