Giving the Scottish National Party a role in the government of the UK would be like putting the child-killing King Herod in charge of a “baby farm”, Boris Johnson has said.
The London Mayor and would-be Conservative MP said that Labour leader Ed Miliband would only be able to become prime minister after the May 7 General Election with the support of the SNP, which would make him the “plaything” of its leader Nicola Sturgeon and her predecessor Alex Salmond.
Mr Johnson described the SNP as “literally anti-British” and said they should not play a part in governing a United Kingdom which they are “sworn to destroy”. And he warned that an SNP/Labour partnership – either in coalition or a less formal co-operation arrangement – would produce a chaotic left-wing administration so “calamitous” that the rest of the UK would be “only too happy” to hand Scotland its independence.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph on the day of the SNP manifesto launch, Mr Johnson said: “You wouldn’t get Herod to run a baby farm, would you? It would not normally occur to you to interview a convicted jewel thief for the post of custodian of the Tower of London.
“You would not dream of asking a fox to look after the henhouse or a temperance campaigner to run a brewery or Attila the Hun to work as a doorkeeper for the Roman senate – and no one in their right mind would enter into a contract with a bunch of voracious weevils to protect the lovely old timbers in the tower of the local church. Would they?
“Any such course of action would be totally nuts. So can someone tell me why in the name of all that is holy there are some apparently rational people who are even contemplating the elevation of the Scottish Nationalist Party to a position of effective dominance in the government of the United Kingdom – an entity that they are sworn to destroy?”
Describing the Scottish nationalists as “lefties on steroids”, Mr Johnson said they would exert pressure on a minority Labour government to abandon efforts to control the deficit, introduce new taxes, scrap the Trident nuclear deterrent and ditch welfare reform.
Despite Mr Miliband’s firm promise not to form a coalition with the SNP, Mr Johnson said the Labour leader would only be able to form a government through a formal coalition with the SNP or a confidence and supply arrangement, under which the nationalists would agree not to bring him down in return for concessions on his priorities.
“It is therefore obvious to every serious political analyst that he would be in many ways the plaything of the SNP,” said the mayor. “He would be the vacillating Macbeth, pushed hither and yon by Lady Macbeth, in the form of Nicola Sturgeon.”
Mr Johnson – who is standing for the Conservatives in Uxbridge and South Ruislip – urged voters to back Tories to prevent a Labour/SNP partnership “wrecking the country”.