Edinburgh: The pro-independence Scottish National Party offered a “hand of friendship” Monday to voters across Britain, offering reassurance about the key role it could play in government after May’s tight election.
Launching the party manifesto at a climbing centre outside Edinburgh, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon vowed that her party would act “responsibly and constructively” if it agreed to prop up a minority centre-left Labour government led by Ed Miliband.
Her comments came as the Conservatives — led by Prime Minister David Cameron, who is battling to stay in office after the May 7 election — seek to play on the fears of some English voters that the SNP could push Labour further left if they teamed up.
The SNP is on course to form the third largest bloc in the Commons with major gains in Scotland, the only part of Britain in which they put up candidates for election.
The party currently has six seats in the House of Commons but is expected to sweep to victory in most of Scotland’s 59 seats, draining support from Labour in one of its traditional heartlands.
“If the SNP emerges from this election in a position of influence, we will exercise that influence responsibly and constructively,” Sturgeon said as she launched the manifesto.
“We will always seek to exercise it in the interests of people not just in Scotland, but across the whole of the UK.”
Sturgeon added that she was offering a “hand of friendship” to everyone in Britain who favoured “progressive” policies.
She pledged that the SNP would fight for an end to austerity cuts in favour of a “modest” spending increase and to scrap Britain’s Scottish-based Trident nuclear deterrent, as well as increasing the minimum wage and introducing a new tax on bankers’ bonuses.
Sturgeon has been talking up the prospect of the SNP supporting a minority Labour government for months, while ruling out any deal with the Conservatives.