Scottish Lib Dems aim high
The Scottish Liberal Democrats have a real chance of winning next spring’s Holyrood elections, their leader has declared.
Nicol Stephen MSP, the deputy first minister of Scotland under a Labour-Lib Dem coalition government, said Labour were going “down and down” and the Scottish National party (SNP) “have just one weapon – massive hype”.
“For the first time in Scottish parliament elections, next May the Liberal Democrats can be Scotland’s largest party. For the first time, the Liberal Democrats are number one in Scotland,” he told delegates at the party conference in Brighton.
However, SNP leader Alex Salmond dismissed Mr Stephen’s comments as “ludicrous”, saying they “fly in the face of all the reasonable evidence”.
“We know that next year’s Scottish election is a straight fight between the SNP and Labour,” he added.
Speaking to conference this morning, the Scottish Lib Dem leader looked back on a “sensational year” for his party, which included winning the Labour safe seat of Dunfermline and West Fife by a swing of 15 per cent in February.
He claimed that in local elections contested by all four Scottish parties this year “it is the Lib Dems who are leading the pack, rising by an average of ten percentage points while the others flatline or decline”.
The SNP’s attacks on the Lib Dems were simply “hype”, Mr Stephen said, arguing: “The SNP are now worse placed in the polls than at either previous Scottish parliament election, and are set to fall back and fail once again.”
Labour were also under pressure from Tony Blair’s indecision about his departure, and in Dunfermline “not even their next door neighbour, Gordon Brown, could save them”.
“That’s why all our strategy, all our ambition, all our campaigning between now and next May must be for the Liberal Democrats to be, for the first time in our history, the largest party in the Scottish parliament,” Mr Stephen declared.
However, Mr Salmond was quick to dismiss the claims, claiming the SNP have actually had the largest gains by any party in local by-elections since the general election.
They had 32 per cent of total votes, compared to the Lib Dems’ “paltry” 12 per cent, the SNP leader said. He added that the polls showed his party was in a better position now than in September 2002.
“While a recent poll showed that the Lib Dems have lost support since axing Charles Kennedy, the SNP are moving forward as we engage with Labour in a head to head contest for the 2007 Scottish election,” Mr Salmond said.
“Only the SNP can beat Labour next year, while a vote for the Lib Dems is a vote for Labour’s Mr McConnell as first minster.
“When placed under pressure, Liberal Democrat politicians are getting increasingly flustered and are demonstrating how out of touch they are with the facts.”
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