Miliband rules out 'confidence-and-supply' agreement with SNP

Ed Miliband has hardened his stance on a future deal between Labour and the Scottish nationalists by ruling out an informal confidence-and-supply arrangement between the two parties in the event of a hung parliament.

The Labour leader has been under sustained pressure in the run-up to the general election over his potential reliance on the SNP to form a government if he does not achieve an outright majority. The Conservatives have warned that Scottish National party support for a Labour minority government could push the UK towards the left and even trigger a constitutional crisis.

While Mr Miliband had previously ruled out a Labour-SNP coalition, he had been more cautious on more informal deals. He told the BBC on Sunday, however: "No coalition, no tie-ins, I have said no deals; I have been clear about that . . . I am not doing deals with the Scottish National party."

When the asked whether this meant explicitly ruling out a confidence-and-supply agreement, he replied: "No deals", and reiterated that in the event of a hung parliament, discussions with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon were "not happening".

The Labour leader - who is facing an electoral wipeout in his party's former heartlands north of the border - also sought to fight back against what he portrayed as the divisive campaign tactics of his opponents. He accused the Tories and the SNP of wanting to "set England and Scotland up against each other", promising that his party would represent a whole, unified country.

But Boris Johnson, the Tory mayor of London, dismissed any suggestion that Labour could form a government without the help of Scottish nationalists. "There is no way Miliband could conceivably govern except with the help of the SNP, maybe crouching on his back like a monkey or whatever," he told the BBC. "I don't want to use any more ill-advised animal metaphors, but that is the reality, and I think it is actually deeply alarming."

Mr Johnson - favourite among Tories as a potential successor to David Cameron - also rubbished the Labour leader's latest electoral pledge: to cap rent increases at the rate of inflation for private sector tenants. "They tried it in Germany, they tried it in New York, and now they're trying to move away from it because it's a disastrous policy," he said.

Repeating his party's arguments that rent controls destroy investment in housing, the London mayor added that this strategy had not worked under the rule of the rule of Roman emperor Diocletian, and would not work now either.

Called upon to defend his policy, Mr Miliband said that Britain was "almost unique in the world" in having insecure one-year tenancies, and that families did not know whether they would be evicted from their houses or face a 10 per cent rise in rent. "That's not good enough for the Britain I want to lead," he said.

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