Scotland has a choice: between a fairer economy or a second referendum

In a few days’ time Scotland can elect MPs who will work every day to improve the lives of working class Scots or we can elect MPs who will work every day for a second referendum.

Scotland has a choice between two roads. The road to a fairer economy with a Labour government which will ban unfair zero hours contracts, end the need for foodbanks and abolish the bedroom tax. Or the road to a second referendum with the SNP.

In the last few days any pretence that the priority of the SNP is to support a progressive Labour Government has fallen away. Under repeated questioning the SNP have made clear that their promise last year, that the referendum would be “once in a generation” has been ditched.

SNP candidate after SNP candidate has been caught-out admitting that their priority is to go to the House of Commons, not to try to deliver change, but to create conflict, cause for a second referendum.

The SNP have based their campaign in Scotland on a fiction – that you can get a Labour government by voting against the Labour Party. They have tried to sustain this by their repeated promises, first that their MPs would never bring down a Labour Government, and second that their MPs would never vote with the Tories. The reality is that if Scotland wants a Labour government then Scots need to vote for Labour MPs

To persuade Labour voters that it is safe to vote SNP the nationalists have shamelessly copied Labour policies – they cut and pasted much of Scottish Labour’s radical manifesto into their own policy platform.

So the SNP have put themselves into a double bind: they have promised to support a Labour Government come what may; and they have put many of Labour’s policies in their manifesto. How can they now credibly threaten to vote against a Labour government.  If they really mean what they say they would have no choice but to vote for a Labour Queen’s Speech and Labour legislation.

The logic of their position has left the SNP with very little power. The differences in policy that the SNP say they will force on Labour  are on issues where Labour can never, would never, and does not need to, do deals.

• On defence we could never allow the safety of our nation to be negotiated away in a back room deal.
• On austerity the SNP’s plans mean more borrowing, less spending, bigger cuts and higher debts for future generations.
• On full fiscal autonomy, meeting the SNP’s demand would mean breaking our promise to keep the Barnett Formula that guarantees higher public spending for Scotland. It would also mean the end to the UK state pension. We will never ever do either of these things.
• And of course, we would never do a deal on Alex Salmond’s demand that the SNP get the right to call another independence referendum.

That is the last thing our country needs. No one, apart from the nationalists, want to go through that process again so quickly.

So the SNP must answer straight questions. Will they keep their promise never to bring down a Labour government or to let the Tories in?

The Tories only chance of clinging on to power is if SNP MPs are prepared to vote out a Labour Government or let in a Tory one.

If the SNP were to do that they will be repeating the catastrophic mistake of 1979 when SNP MPs voted down Labour and gave us Mrs Thatcher.  The Scottish people would never forgive them.

Last night Ed Miliband called the SNP’s bluff.

Jim Murphy is leader of the Scottish Labour Party and he is the candidate for East Renfrewshire