Alex Salmond will never be allowed input in a UK Labour government budget “in a million years”, leader Ed Miliband has said.
Mr Miliband again ruled out a coalition with the SNP after the election, but repeatedly brushed off suggestions that he may require SNP votes to get his policies through if he fails to secure a majority in the election.
In a speech in Clydebank, he said he can win a majority, and it will be up to other parties to decide how they will vote on Labour policies.
After Mr Salmond said the SNP would hold “the power” if a Labour government needed its votes to survive, Mr Miliband said: “Alex Salmond is at it again, and it’s a combination of bluster and bluff. I gather he has got a book to sell.
“I’ll tell you who is going to be writing the Labour budget it’s me and Ed Balls.
“It’s not going to be Alex Salmond not in a million years.”
When asked to rule out a vote-by-vote confidence and supply deal, Mr Miliband said: “Look, honestly, how other parties decide to vote on the basis of a Labour Queen’s speech is going to be up to them, but I want a majority Labour government.
“And, look, with the greatest of respect, we will let Alex Salmond try to sell his book, but what we are going to try and do is show the people of Scotland what the choice is at the general election.
“And, you know, you don’t blow the whistle on the match before the game is over and I am not going to do that, because there is six and half weeks for people to make up their minds.”
When pressed to rule out a vote-by-vote deal, he said: “As I have said, it will be for other parties to decide how to vote on a Labour Queen’s speech.
“I couldn’t be clearer, I’m putting forward a Labour manifesto I want to implement.
“We shouldn’t be so presumptuous to decide the outcome of the election before the election has happened.
“I believe I can win a majority Labour government.”
Mr Miliband said Labour will deliver the change Scotland needs, calling for a “fundamental break” from the coalition Government’s “deadly cocktail of extreme spending cuts and unfair taxes”.
He said: “Tory austerity makes it so much harder for us to educate the young. Tory austerity makes life insecure for the old, Tory austerity undermines our NHS and our vital public services in every single part of the UK.
“So we will put paid once and for all to Tory austerity with a Labour government.”
Labour offered a “fundamentally different” plan to get the deficit down in its goals, approach and values, he said.
He the attacked SNP plans for full fiscal autonomy, which he said would extend Tory austerity north of the border.
“That means the SNP fight this election still proposing to end the sharing of resources across the UK, the principle of redistribution,” he said.
“They are campaigning for the end of the Barnett Formula, replacing it with a reliance on risky and unpredictable oil revenues – revenues which even (First Minister) Nicola Sturgeon admits are astonishingly hard to predict.
“That has real consequences for Scotland because fiscal autonomy would make it impossible for Scotland to end Tory austerity – and in fact, worse than that, it would extend it.
“New figures recently published by the Scottish Government show it would mean huge cuts to the funding of health, education and policing – in total, on the basis of last week’s Budget, £7.6 billion lost to the people of Scotland.
“The SNP proposal for fiscal autonomy would cost Scotland billions, money that would have to come from cuts to the fundamental public services on which all the people of Scotland rely.”
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