Labour support in Scotland falling, claims SNP

GLASGOW: The SNP is forecasting it will win seats back from Labour in next month’s General Election, as a senior figure claimed support for Jeremy Corbyn’s party is “falling off like snow off a dyke”.

Humza Yousaf, the Scottish Justice Secretary, predicted his party would do a “lot better” than it did in 2017, when 35 SNP MPs were elected. He made the claim after Corbyn spent two days campaigning in Scotland — during which he was repeatedly forced to clarify his stance on whether Labour would permit a second independence referendum.

The UK Labour leader initially said such a vote would not be permitted in the first five-year parliamentary term of a Labour government, before changing this to say it would not take place in the “early years” of such an administration. He then finally said indyref2 would “certainly not” take place in the first two years of his premiership. Yousaf told the PA news agency: “Labour’s support that they had in 2017 is falling off like snow off a dyke. I’m very confident we are going to do a lot better.”

Speaking as he campaigned in Glasgow North East, which Labour’s Paul Sweeney won in 2017, Mr Yousaf said the SNP are “quite confident” of seizing the seat on December 12.

He also demanded that whoever forms the next UK government repays the VAT charges that police and fire services in Scotland had to pay for years after the SNP merged them into national bodies.

Yousaf said pressure from the SNP at Westminster meant Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service no longer have to pay VAT, and some payments have been returned.

But he said five years worth of payments — amounting to £175 million — should also be returned, as he accused Westminster of “dipping their hands into the pockets of our emergency services, singling out Scottish police and fire services to unfairly face VAT bills”.

Yousaf said: “SNP MPs will hold the next UK government to account and demand that they pay back that money to our police and fire services. Our main message to whoever gets into Number 10 is a very clear one - you have taken £175 million of VAT from our police and fire services, whoever gets into Number 10, we demand that back.”