The SNP’s argument that the way to get a Labour Government is to vote against Labour doesn’t stack up

We are only on day two of the formal General Election campaign, but already we have learned a lot about the choice facing the people of Scotland on 7 May.

Let’s start with Labour’s positive offer. We have a plan to make Scotland the fairest nation on earth. We will make sure working class families in Scotland get a fair shot at life. So we will bring an end to the failed austerity agenda of George Osborne. Unlike other parties, we won’t rely on the money tree to make this a reality.

Take your pick from our policies. There are loads to choose from:

-A Mansion Tax on properties worth more than £2 million, raised mainly in the South East of England, to fund 1,000 more nurses in Scotland.

-A Bankers’ Bonus Tax to guarantee a job and training for up to 5,000 young Scots in just the first year.

-Changes to the pension tax relief system for the wealthiest few, so we can provide up to 40,000 apprentices in Scotland with free bus travel, keep university tuition free and establish a £1,600 Future Fund for every 18 and 19 year old not in university, college or a modern apprenticeship.

-And we’ll call time on exploitative zero hours contracts and boost the minimum wage to £8 an hour.

The reason other parties want to keep banging on about back room deals before a single vote has even been cast is because they don’t have a positive offer to put to the people of Scotland.

Look at what the Tories and SNP are saying. The Tories are promising another five years of failed austerity. Another five years of an economy that doesn’t help working class families get on in life. And the SNP tell us they want to end austerity but would, in fact, continue with George Osborne’s spending plans next year. Yesterday Gordon Brown exposed the fact that the SNP don’t plan to spend a single penny more than the Tories next year.

I was on TV last night with a senior SNP Minister. Not only did he refuse to defend the SNP’s central General Election demand for full fiscal autonomy within the UK – which means what we spend in Scotland we raise in Scotland, with the scrapping of the block grant to be replaced by reliance on plummeting oil revenues – he sounded like he was running away from it.

That’s because the experts have made clear that full fiscal autonomy within the UK would mean £7.6 billion worth of extra spending cuts to our schools and NHS, and cost 138,000 jobs.

That isn’t an end to austerity – it’s austerity-max. And that’s why colleagues elsewhere in the UK shouldn’t take the SNP’s claims to be a progressive force at face value. There is nothing progressive about the SNP’s plan to slash public spending in Scotland.

It’s day two and the choice in this election is clearer than ever. A Labour Party that will transform our country to make if a fairer place in which to live and work. Or the Tories and SNP, whose plans for even more austerity would devastate Scotland.

The way to put that Labour plan into action is to vote for Labour. No matter how hard they try, the SNP’s bizarre argument that the way to get a Labour Government is to vote against Labour doesn’t stack up.

A vote for anybody other than Labour risks the Tories being the largest party across the UK and David Cameron waltzing back into Downing Street. Waking up on 8 May to that scene would be the ultimate nightmare for Scotland.

Margaret Curran is the Shadow Scottish Secretary and Labour’s Candidate in Glasgow East