Prime minister David Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband have traded vicious insults as the row about the holding of general election television debates with party leaders sharply intensified.
Mr Cameron has refused to take part in a head-to-head debate with Mr Miliband, offering one debate with Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the UK Independence Party, Plaid Cymru, the Scottish National Party and the Greens.
During some of the most personal exchanges between the two in the House of Commons, Mr Cameron told Mr Miliband that Labour has now accepted that it will need Scottish National Party votes if it is win control over Downing Street in May.
“The truth is he is weak and despicable and wants to crawl to power in Alex Salmond’s pocket,” he said. “Its only way into Downing Street is on Alex Salmond’s coat tails. It is an alliance between the people who want to bankrupt Britain and the people who want to break up Britain. And the British people will never have it.”
Warnings
Conservative Party candidates in
England
have reported back that voters are responding to Cameron’s warnings in recent days about the influence the SNP could have after the May 7th general election if Labour forms a government with their backing.
Inaccurately representing a Scottish Labour leaflet, Mr Cameron said Labour has given up hopes of winning a majority on its own and is now prepared to ally itself “with people who want to break up the future of our country”.
“What a despicable and weak thing to do - risking our defences, risking our country, risking our UK. If he had an ounce of courage he’d rule it out!” the prime minister said, to Conservative cheers.
Attack tactics
However, the MPs in the chamber who liked Mr Cameron’s attack tactics most were the Scottish National Party, which is currently threatening – if opinion polls are even broadly accurate – to destroy Labour’s hold over 41 Commons seats in
Scotland
.
The Labour leader has said he is prepared to take in any selection of debates organised by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, though Mr Cameron has long believed that debates five years ago cost him the election.
However, former leading Labour figure Lord Peter Mandelson said broadcasters do not have the right "to empty chair" Mr Cameron – as some exasperated executives want to do now.
“I think David Cameron is entitled not to do that debate in the particular way that the broadcasters have described and the Labour Party is entitled to make him look and appear completely frit [frightened] and chicken and force him to take a hit for not doing the debates,” he said.
Democratic Unionist Party MP Nigel Dodds accused the BBC of having abandoned its requirement to be impartial by offering a seven-day debate that included nationalist parties, such as the SNP and Plaid, but excluded them.
