Election '97: Blair 'cannot count on Scots or Welsh'

A Labour government could not count on support from the Scottish or Welsh nationalist parties unless it offered a referendum on their independence from England, the parties' leaders warned yesterday.

Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, and Daffyd Wigley, leader of Plaid Cymru, both attacked Tony Blair at a press conference in London and said that if he wanted their backing he would have to earn it.

Both men said they still described themselves as Socialists and attacked new Labour for its drift to the right.

Mr Salmond said the Scottish people would want to know whether a Labour referendum was on a Scottish parliament or on the "English parish council" which Mr Blair had said was similar to his idea of the assembly.

"Any consultative referendum in Scotland should have independence on the ballot paper along with devolution and the other option of doing nothing at all," he said.

Mr Wigley added that Plaid Cymru would not give unconditional backing to a Labour government: "If they want our support they have to earn it and they have to do that by giving Wales the full referendum which so far they haven't been prepared to do," he said.

The two party leaders called their press conference to protest at Labour's position on tax and spending. Mr Salmond said he believed Scottish people earning more than pounds 26,000 per year would be prepared to pay more tax to avoid "having to step over their fellow Scots" living on the streets of major cities.

Mr Salmond also said recent comments by Margaret Thatcher appearing to welcome Mr Blair's reforms of the Labour party were not to be welcomed.

"A new Labour leader who backs the policies of Margaret Thatcher and who is pursuing a political love affair with the past Conservative prime minister is going to find a very frosty reception in the politics of Scotland and Wales," he said.

Mr Salmond added that he had hopes that his mother Mary, who had voted Conservative since 1945, might vote for his party on 1 May.

The turning point seemed to have been the pounds 475,000-a-year salary paid to former British Gas chief executive Cedric Brown - the "biggest fat cat of them all", he said.

"As a small gas shareholder, that example of corporate greed was the final straw for her," he said.

"People across the political spectrum in Scotland, including my mother, who has been voting Tory since 1945, believe that Cedric Brown should be contributing a bit more to help fund health, education and housing."

Mr Salmond said that he had been encouraged when, at the last local elections, his mother had asked for a postal vote and had told him: "You'll be all right this time!"