INDEPENDENCE FOR Scotland will form a central plank in the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) election campaign for the Scottish parliament next year, first minister Alex Salmond has declared.
He also insisted that he will not play the role of “the manager” in the implementation of cuts decided in Westminster by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition.
Speaking to his party’s conference in Perth, Mr Salmond said: “We face an election in a short while. To my mind, the choice is simple. Either Scotland stays in the Westminster straitjacket of low growth, public sector cutbacks and blighted futures, or we take responsibility and deliver the better society we all want.”
In recent years, Scottish public backing for independence has waned considerably, given that two Scottish banks, Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland, were at the centre of the United Kingdom’s financial crisis, with both requiring tens of billions of pounds in backing from the treasury to stay in business.
Now, however, the SNP believes that opinion will change again once spending cuts over the next four years begin to bite as of late spring, just before voters go to the polls for the Holyrood parliament in May. The cuts, to be announced on Wednesday by British chancellor George Osborne, are expected to be in the region of £85 billion (€97 billion).
Condemning the cuts, Mr Salmond said: “Well, I have news for Cameron: this is a question of economics, not crossed fingers.
“The cuts are too fast and too deep – we said that at the beginning, we say it now, though I notice many more agree with us as time goes by.
“Do not sacrifice the public services to appease your ideological gods. Do not let the people suffer for attitudes forged on the playing fields of Eton.”
Defending his backing for independence, he said: “I do not want independence for its own sake, but for the sake of the people here and now, and those to come. I will not be a manager of Westminster-directed cuts, nor part of a parliament which acts as a message boy for decisions made elsewhere.”
The Westminster spending cuts are likely to devastate parts of Scotland, which has enjoyed budget increases that have run at 5 percentage points above inflation since devolution in 1999, leading to large-scale public service job losses and cuts in services.
In a recent poll, Scots said the cuts had gone far enough, when, in fact, they had not even started.
Faced with opposition in Holyrood and a lack of public support, the SNP leader recently abandoned a plan to hold a referendum on independence before May’s election, though he insisted then and since that he intends to hold one afterwards if the SNP – which currently runs a minority administration – holds power in Edinburgh.
Meanwhile, the Scottish health secretary, SNP deputy leader Nicola Sturgeon, said prescription charges for drugs – which currently cost £3 for a single item in Scotland, compared with £7.20 in England – would be abolished from next April. She claimed the measure could be paid for by administration savings in the National Health Service – including the sacking of one in every four of its managers.
The decision, combined with pledges to continue to freeze council taxes along with rapidly increasing and unbudgeted costs in free nursing home care for the elderly, could leave the next Scottish parliament facing a perfect storm as it seeks to agree a budget against a backdrop of Conservative/Liberal Democrat cuts from London. One of the SNP’s leading backers, multi-millionaire Angus Tulloch, said he believed Scots were “too frightened” to back separation from London: “I think they’re too worried about what’s gone on in the financial world, and so I think they’re less open to the possibility of really standing on our own feet. I think [a referendum] probably would be turned down.”