Latest Tory alliance proves Scotland can’t trust the Lib Dems

It is often said that a leopard cannot change its spots. In the case of the Liberal Democrats, however, it is often more a case of a chameleon with a skin on shuffle mode. But when push comes to shove with the LibDems it can’t help itself from putting its hand in the Tory fire.

Despite supporting Scottish Home Rule for over a century, and promising in the 2014 that a ‘No’ vote would mean Scotland having the right to decide its own future, today’s Liberal Democrats have totally abandoned decades of those principles to adopt the position of the Tories.

In a vote in the Scottish Parliament they were the only party to join the Tories in opposing a vote that expressed the belief that Scotland is a nation – a nation which has a right to decide its own future.

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Sir Ed Davey’s latest public pronouncements makes for more staggering reading. Refusing to rule out a post-election deal with the Tories, the LibDem leader openly floated the idea of hopping back into bed with the Tories in the event of a hung parliament.

Watching Sir Ed attempt to present himself as a safe pair of hands for coalition government is akin to listening to a clown offer their services as an undertaker.

To hear LibDems talk about coalition experience as if it were a badge of honour is a masterclass in political amnesia.

But Scotland remembers. We remember precisely what happened the last time the Liberal Democrats were given a sniff of power in Westminster.

Cast your mind back to 2010.

The LibDems marched into the general election preening themselves as the fresh-faced, progressive alternative to Tory cruelty.

Their campaign was plastered with pledges signed in indelible ink, most famously their solemn, ironclad vow to vote against any rise in university tuition fees.

What happened the moment Nick Clegg, Ed Davey and Danny Alexander caught a glimpse of the ministerial red boxes?

That famous pledge was folded into a paper aeroplane and tossed straight out of the window of 10 Downing Street. With Vince Cable leading the charge as Business Secretary, the LibDems did not merely passively allow tuition fees to rise – they actively orchestrated a trebling of the cap to £9,000 a year in England.

And it did not end there. For five long years, the Lib Dems acted as the political human shields for David Cameron and George Osborne.

They were not reluctant bystanders trapped in a room with a bully; they loyally followed the Tories through the voting corridors.

With LibDem ministers like Danny Alexander sitting at the very heart of the Treasury, they helped co-author an aggressive austerity programme that gutted public services.

They signed off on the hated “Bedroom Tax” and supported sweeping welfare cuts that pushed vulnerable families across these islands to the brink.

Even now Ed Davey refuses to admit LibDem support for austerity cuts was wrong.

Despite explicitly promising to resist top-down reorganisations of the NHS, LibDem ministers also enabled Andrew Lansley’s disastrous Health and Social Care Act, opening the floodgates to marketisation in England.

In opposition they had campaigned against new nuclear power stations for decades. Yet it was LibDem Energy Secretaries Chris Huhne and Ed Davey who had their hand on the joystick to clear the flight path for Hinkley Point C. A decision that will see Scots pay higher energy bills.

After warning voters in the election about a “Tory VAT bombshell“, they walked into government and immediately pressed the detonator, hiking VAT to 20%.

The LibDems didn’t dampen Tory excess – they helped turbocharge it.

Now, Sir Ed Davey wants us to believe that a repeat performance would be entirely benign. But history tells us that whenever the LibDems are offered a choice between sticking to their soundbites, sorry, principles, or sitting in a ministerial chauffeur-driven car, the leather seats win every single time.

A vote for the Liberal Democrats is not a vote for a progressive alternative; it is a lottery ticket where the main prize is always leads to Downing Street.

Only a vote for the SNP provides a firm deadbolt against Tory rule.

The fundamental flaw in the Westminster system is not just that the LibDems are endlessly prone to selling their souls for a seat at the cabinet table. It is that the entire apparatus is rigged against the democratic wishes of the Scottish people.

Scotland has not voted for a Tory government in 70 years not since 1955, shortly after Winston Churchill was in No. 10 and television was still broadcast in black and white.

Yet for decades, we have been subjected to Tory Prime Ministers, Tory austerity, and Tory policies that the people of Scotland overwhelmingly reject at the ballot box.

Whether it is a full-fat Tory administration, a Faustian Tory-LibDem coalition, or recent Labour administrations imposing Tory policies, the outcome for Scotland is precisely the same: Westminster decisions imposed upon Scotland against its collective will. A position now enthusiastically supported by the LibDems who are now little better than Tories in orange rosettes.

We do not need to settle for choosing the least worst flavour of Westminster control, nor do we need to rely on the gelatinous political backbone of the Liberal Democrats.

There is only one true guarantee that Scotland will always get the government it actually votes for: Taking our future into our own hands with independence.

Only as an independent nation can we ensure that Scotland’s priorities are decided right here in Scotland, by the people who live here – every single time.