Balls says Scottish nationalist MPs would focus on referendum

Scottish nationalist MPs would spend their time in Westminster trying to secure a second independence referendum if elected in 10 days' time, Ed Balls has warned.

Speaking to an audience of Labour activists in Glasgow, the shadow chancellor appeared alongside Jim Murphy, the Labour leader in Scotland, in a last-ditch bid to slow the Scottish National party's momentum.

Mr Balls told the event: "SNP MPs aren't going to the House of Commons to fight poverty, they are going to re-fight the referendum."

The message is a shift in the Labour strategy to fight the SNP, which so far has focused on warning Scottish voters that a vote for the pro-independence party risks letting David Cameron back into Downing Street.

It came as a new poll showed the SNP moving further ahead of Labour in Scotland, with TNS giving the party 54 per cent, a result that could see them win all but two seats in Scotland.

The poll also showed however that nearly one in three Scots say they have not yet made up their mind how to vote, something Mr Balls said should give Labour hope.

Meanwhile Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, tried to quell fears in the rest of the UK that a strong performance for her party would damage areas outside Scotland.

The SNP leader said that in the event that neither Labour nor the Conservatives obtained a clear majority on May 7, a minority government would "offer huge opportunity" for her party to "wield influence" on a "case by case basis".

"They will have to reflect how people have voted and be prepared to talk and compromise . . . it gives parties like the SNP enormous clout and influence [in Westminster]," she said in an interview with the BBC's Today programme.

She said the party's anti-austerity stance "will also benefit many other parts of the UK [outside of Scotland] where people are as hungry for change as the people in Scotland are".

Although Labour leader Ed Miliband has repeatedly ruled out a formal coalition with the SNP, Ms Sturgeon said on Monday that he "can't deny the reality of the situation".

"Even if the Tories are the largest party, the anti-Tory parties should band together to lock the Tory party out of Downing Street," she said. "We're not going into the House of Commons with the intention of bringing governments down; we want positive, progressive change."

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"Even if we won every single seat in Scotland, that would not be a mandate for a referendum," she said. "If the SNP is a force in the House of Commons, we will exercise our influence for the people of Scotland and many other people in the UK. It's a hand of friendship that we will be holding out."

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