Miliband refusal to rule out SNP deal ‘despicable’ says PM

Ed Miliband was stung into yesterday’s announcement that there will be no formal coalition with the SNP after receiving warnings by party insiders that the Tory attack posters depicting Miliband “in the pocket” of Alex Salmond were hurting Labour in Scotland and in English seats, where Salmond and his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, are seen by some voters as hate figures.

The Labour leader said there would be “no SNP ministers in any government I lead” because there were “big differences” between the two parties. He sought to dismiss the idea of a Lab-SNP coalition as Tory “scare-mongering”.

However, he refused to rule out a more informal post-election deal under which the SNP – expected to win as many as 50 Scottish seats at Westminster on 7 May – might support a minority Labour government on a vote-by-vote “confidence and supply” basis.

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David Cameron jumped on this, calling it a “despicable” omission. "Not ruling out a deal, or a pact, or support from the Scottish National Party means that the Labour Party is effectively saying, 'We're trying to ride to power on the back of a party that wants to break up our country’," the PM told Buzzfeed.

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Sturgeon, speaking at the London School of Economics said, “This was a lot of hype to rule out something no one was proposing. Mr Miliband’s statement is absolutely fine from our point of view, because formal coalition with seats in the UK government has never been our preference.”

The Scottish first minister said Miliband's comments did "not change anything" and said the SNP could still reach an informal arrangement with Labour to "keep the Tories out of power”.

Sturgeon wowed her audience at the LSE by abandoning the SNP’s previous self-denying ordnance not to vote on purely English issues and promising that the SNP would vote with Labour to bring “positive change across the UK”, including spending more on benefits and scrapping the Trident nuclear weapon system.

Daily Mail sketch-writer Quentin Letts mocked Sturgeon’s “bonkers barnet” (she’s had a new hairdo) but had to concede she proved a big hit at the LSE, inside the “sacred wigwam of Fabianism”.

Letts enthused: “Hearing a lime green-clad Sturgeon talk of an alliance of ‘progressives’ (regressives might be more accurate) they [the audience] cheered this leader of the previously hated Scots Nats. They preferred her to Miliband by a mile…”

The Tories will now redouble their attacks on the prospect of Miliband relying on Salmond and Sturgeon to gain power.

At Prime Minister’s Questions last week, Cameron said: “It is an alliance between those who want to bankrupt Britain and those who want to break it up.” Miliband can expect to hear that line repeated ad nauseam until 7 May.