[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7uuO7N4-7E]
Deadline reporter RORY REYNOLDS hears from Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy & Edinburgh South candidate Ian Murray why Scotland must stop the Tories.
SCOTTISH secretary Jim Murphy urged voters to shun the “X-Factor celebrity” leaders of the Tories and Lid Dems and back Labour as the final week of the election campaign got underway yesterday.
Murphy billed Gordon Brown as a “man of substance” and urged undecided voters to back his party, saying “we can still win this.”
Unveiling a new election poster in central Edinburgh yesterday alongside local candidates the cabinet minister said that Scotland should be afraid of what a Tory government might do to public services.
He said: “There’s a huge number of undecided voters across the whole of the country. I think we can still win this.
“If you want X-Factor celebrity type politics then of course you can put yourself next to someone else’s name.
“But if you want someone who knows what their doing, who’s got real experience, who will create jobs of the future, who will stop the Tories winning in this election, then Gordon Brown and the Labour Party are the only real choice.”
Deprivation
Murphy warned Scots voters of the Conservatives’ history north of the border, saying that Scotland had come too far to return to the social deprivation of the 1980s.
He said: “Scotland remembers what happened in the 1980s and 1990s when the Tories where in power, the social divisions of that time, and a government that couldn’t care less about the problems the country faced.
“Scotland’s worked to hard to go back to the Tories. We’ve come an awful long way together the people of Scotland and the Labour Party and we’ve changed for the better, while the Tories have stayed very much the same.”
Labour’s latest election poster, unveiled beneath the city’s Carlton Hill yesterday, features Conservative leader David Cameron cackling next to the words, ‘If you don’t stop him no one will’.
Energy
Murphy added that the prime minister was looking forward to the final week of campaigning, ahead of polling day on Thursday.
He said: “I spoke to Gordon over the weekend and he’s really got a huge amount of energy, he’s campaigning to win, he’s in this to win it. He’s a great self character, great self-belief, and a positive vision for Scotland’s and Britain’s future.
“A lot people I meet in Scotland are afraid, very afraid, of what a Tory government would do for Scotland and do to Scotland, removing child trust funds, child tax credits, not backing shipbuilding in Rosyth or in the Clyde. It’s the same old Tory party.”
“And the important thing now in politics if that we rebuild the public trust and that we have a new system of expenses so that MPs are never able to vote on their own expenses again.”
Upset
Councillor Ian Murray, Labour candidate for Edinburgh South told voters that the Liberal Democrats would side with the Tories in parliament, and attacked the Lib Dems record of running the Scots capital.
He said: “Nick Clegg has made it quite clear that in the event of a hung parliament he is more likely than not to vote with the Conservatives so if people don’t want a Conservative government they need to put their vote in a Labour box.
“People in Edinburgh are very, very upset with the Liberal Democrat council and their swinging cuts in education and services for the vulnerable, so it’s little wonder that local people are turning away from the Liberal Democrats and putting their trust in the Labour box.”
