Ed Miliband to accuse Alex Salmond of mimicking Conservative policies
Labour leader says the first minister is competing with David Cameron in 'race to the bottom' by protecting the wealthy
Ed Miliband’s speech will make clear that Labour is preparing to fight the SNP in September’s independence referendum. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
Ed Miliband is to accuse Alex Salmond of competing with the Tories in a "race to the bottom" by promising deeper tax cuts for businesses and protecting low taxes for the wealthy.
The Labour leader will tell Scottish Labour's spring conference on Friday that the first minister has sabotaged his claims to be a social democrat by mimicking Tory policies which protect the interests of the highest earners.
Salmond has refused to commit his party to restoring a 50p top rate of income tax after independence; refused to back Labour's promise to freeze energy prices until 2017; and has pledged to cut corporation taxes by 3p below the UK government's rate, Miliband will tell the party.
If Salmond won his quest for independence, Miliband will argue, "think how hard it would be to stop a race to the bottom happening if, on one island, we had a border running along the middle so we were divided in two. It would be two lanes in a race to the bottom, with David Cameron and Alex Salmond at the starting blocks in which the only way they win is for you to lose."
Peppered by direct references to Salmond, Miliband's speech is further evidence of Labour's decision to make a direct assault on claims by the first minister and the Scottish National party that they are pursuing centre-left, social democratic policies in the independence referendum campaign.
In a message directed too at Labour voters and the centre-left in England, where Salmond's attacks on NHS privatisation, tuition fees and the Iraq war are welcomed, Miliband will accuse the SNP of misrepresenting political sentiment in the rest of the UK.
"The SNP want to tell you that there is a progressive Scotland and a Tory England. There isn't," Miliband is expected to say. "When we're in need, we don't ask whether we are Scottish, English, Welsh or Northern Irish, we look after each other. And, in the same way, we will build prosperity for the future and for every part of the United Kingdom in a race to the top by creating those good, high-paying jobs that people should expect."
The Labour leader's speech will make clear his party is preparing to fight the SNP in three separate contests: September's referendum and the Westminster and Scottish parliamentary elections in 2015 and 2016. Scottish Labour hopes to win back power by regaining centre-left urban votes lost in the last years of the New Labour era.
"Alex Salmond, who claims to be a great social democrat, would end up running the same race to the bottom that the Tories have embarked upon," Miliband will say, before invoking the memory of John Smith, the former UK Labour leader whose death 20 years ago led to Tony Blair's election. "The SNP talk about social justice but they can't build it because they can't be narrow nationalists and serve social justice at the same time."
Salmond earlier rejected Labour claims that he was opposed to a living wage. He told MSPs at Holyrood that his government had brought in higher wage rates across all government departments and was working to extend the living wage to other public services. The SNP also insist that it would strive to protect free university education, resist privatisation of the NHS and universal services such as free prescriptions and free personal care after independence.
As Miliband arrived in Scotland for a private visit to Rosyth dockyard on the Firth of Forth, Scottish Labour's claims that its plans to increase Holyrood's powers over income tax would allow MSPs to control 40% of its spending were attacked by a centre-right thinktank.
Reform Scotland, which runs the Devo Plus campaign and which wants significant areas of UK spending devolved to Holyrood but rejects independence, said the party had greatly exaggerated the scope of the new income tax powers, published earlier this week.
Ben Thomson, Reform Scotland's chairman, said Scottish Labour was guilty of "jiggery pokery" because it had failed to include all Scottish government spending in its calculations, which rose to £38bn if all central and local government spending were included.
Labour's new powers on income tax would only cover 26% of total Scottish government spending – only a few per cent more than currently planned under new powers coming into force in 2016. "I don't think anyone is going to have any truck with this," Thomson said.
Scottish Labour said Thomson was using the wrong figures: the Scottish parliament's library had confirmed that giving Holyrood power over 15p in the pound on income tax was worth more than 36% of the Scottish government's central budget of £29bn.
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