BRITISH CONSERVATIVE Party leader David Cameron has ruled out independence for Scotland if he becomes prime minister after this year’s British general election and launched a strong attack on the Scottish National Party.
The SNP is currently pushing for a referendum to put a number of options before Scottish voters, including full independence, nearly full independence and the transfer of full powers over taxation from Westminster.
However, Mr Cameron sharply attacked SNP leader Alex Salmond for his repeated declarations that Scotland, enjoying substantial, but declining revenues from North Seas oil, would be in the black if it was now independent.
"If Alex Salmond thinks he can fool people by saying 'Oh if only we were independent, we wouldn't have any debts, we wouldn't have any deficit, we wouldn't have any problems.' People know that's tosh," Mr Cameron told the Heraldnewspaper.
The SNP is dearly hoping for a Conservative victory in the general election, believing Scottish voters will recoil from a Tory-controlled Downing Street and opt for independence.
Making it clear that the Conservatives would not fuel independence demands, the Conservative leader, who has just one MP north of the border and is targeting 11 seats there, will address a party conference in Perth today.
Accepting that the Conservatives are still unpopular with many in Scotland after the Thatcher era, Mr Cameron stressed that he leads a “different Conservative Party to the one that was in power in the 1980s”.
“Judge us by what we do ... I understand the worry people have about the scale of a UK mandate and I understand people’s worry about governing Scotland with respect, and that we have to prove ourselves,” he declared.
Evidence is growing, he said, that independence is “not what people in Scotland want”, but he acknowledged that the Scottish parliament in Holyrood should have greater financial powers.
So far, Mr Cameron has insisted that major spending cuts will have to be made by the next government, though he has softened the message in recent weeks by saying that such measures will not be implemented immediately.
United Kingdom taxation revenues are divided between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland under the so-called Barnett Formula, which gives proportionally more to Scotland than to England.
The Labour government in Westminster has put forward a White Paper that would give Scotland more powers to set tax rates, but the Conservatives have so far not detailed what they would do if elected.
Mr Cameron yesterday made clear that Barnett would be replaced by a “needs-based” system: “Scotland has its own great needs and it would get a lot of money under any new formula,” he said.
However, SNP Westminster MP Angus Robertson claimed that the Tory leader had admitted that Scotland would lose out: “This is a huge pre-election blunder by David Cameron.”
Meanwhile, the SNP, which runs a minority government in Edinburgh, has fallen behind Labour in Scotland for the first time since Mr Salmond became Scottish First Minister three years ago. Labour now stands at 37 per cent in the polls, compared to 35 per cent for the SNP. Labour’s lead over the SNP in the coming Westminster race is even greater: 42 points to Labour to 26 for the pro-independence party.