NICOLA Sturgeon has said claims that Labour need Scottish to win a majority at Westminster are a “fallacy”.
The former first minister hit out at a "timid" Keir Starmer and his party in her column for The National’s sister paper The Glasgow Times.
Sturgeon’s comments come after her successor as SNP leader, Humza Yousaf, also said that Starmer does not need Scottish votes in order to become prime minister.
Yousaf said: “Keir Starmer does not need Scotland to win the election, that is the point. He is going to be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom.
“If you have a bunch of Scottish Labour MPs, are they really going to be standing up for Scotland or will they be standing up for Keir Starmer?”
Labour MP Ian Murray, the party’s shadow Scotland secretary, claimed Yousaf’s comments were “incomprehensible nonsense”, saying they amounted to telling people: “Your vote doesn’t matter so vote for an opposition MP rather than an MP at the [heart] of govt.”
But writing in The Glasgow Times, Sturgeon urged Scots not to fall for an “arithmetic fallacy” from Labour.
“In Scotland, we will hear the usual claims about voting Labour being the only way to stop the Tories. That is no truer now than it has ever been,” the former SNP leader wrote.
“The colour of the Westminster government and identity of the prime minister is determined south of the Border, not in Scotland – after all, we account for less than 10% of Westminster constituencies.
“In the days when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, the fact that Labour won most Scottish seats didn’t stop her having a thumping majority. And, conversely, Tony Blair would still have been prime minister even if Labour had lost all of their seats here.
“So, I hope the General Election debate won’t be based on some arithmetic fallacy but, instead, on an assessment of which party offers the best long-term prospects for Scotland.
“As someone who has been in politics for a long time now – longer than I care to remember sometimes – it genuinely confuses me that Labour, under Keir Starmer, are being so timid (and let’s be in no doubt, he is the boss when it comes to Scottish Labour).
“At a time when people are crying out for change at Westminster, he seems intent on minimising his differences with the Tories.”
Sturgeon argued that Starmer’s lack of ambition and refusal to “commit to getting rid of the cruellest of Tory policies” left the field open for the SNP to offer “the real change that people want”.
She went on: “Westminster elections have never been easy for the SNP – our landslides of recent years make it too easy to forget that until 2015 we had never scored more than 11 seats in a UK election, never mind won one outright.
“But in 2015, 2017 and 2019 we showed it was possible and I believe we will do so again, by offering hope for the future.”
Last week, BBC Scotland was urged to issue a correction after one of its reporters claimed that “in most UK elections, Scottish votes have been crucial to deciding who takes power”.
However, since 1945, just four General Elections would have had a different result if Scotland’s votes were not included.
In 1964, Labour won a majority. Without Scotland, the Tories would have been the largest party, but without a majority.
The two elections of 1974 saw Scottish votes make Labour the largest party. And in 2010, if Scottish votes had not been included, the Tories would have had a majority without needing LibDem support.
