Blair warns over SNP threat

12 April 2012

Prime Minister Tony Blair has mounted a passionate defence of Scotland's union with England, and warned of a "constitutional nightmare" if the SNP wins power in Edinburgh next May.

He made the claim in a speech to his party's Scottish conference, where he warned the Scottish National Party was "deadly serious" in its goal of independence.

Mr Blair said next May's Scottish Parliament elections had only two "seriously possible" outcomes - an SNP or a Labour government in Edinburgh.

"Imagine May 2007," he told the conference in Oban, Argyll. "The SNP plunge us into a constitutional nightmare.

"It's not the constitution alone I fear for. It's what it says about us, about the people, about our nations - that at a time of momentous challenge when our path to progress was clear, we lost our nerve and turned in on ourselves."

Mr Blair's warning came at what was effectively a swansong address to his Scottish party.

It was delivered to an audience of 800, and was rewarded with a standing ovation, although a few in the hall remained seated.

Virtually all of the speech was devoted to the attack on the SNP, and the passionate defence of the Union.

He cited a £10 billion "Union dividend" through higher public spending in Scotland, the "massive" costs of an independent Scotland setting up separate systems for social security, tax credits, benefits and pensions, and the risks of ending 300 years of shared history.

SNP leader Alex Salmond later described the Prime Minister as a "crushing electoral liability" for the Scottish Labour Party.

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