Leading Conservatives are playing a “short term and dangerous” game that threatens the future of the UK by building up the SNP as a way of damaging the Labour party in Scotland, Lord Forsyth, the senior Tory peer, has told the Guardian.

In a sign of deep unease among senior Tories at some of the party’s tactics, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean accused the prime minister of having “shattered” the pro-UK alliance in Scotland and stirring up English nationalism after the Scottish independence referendum last year.

The intervention by the last Tory to serve as secretary of state for Scotland came on the eve of a speech by Sir John Major who will endorse warnings by David Cameron about the dangers of a post-election deal between Labour and the Scottish National party.



The former prime minister, who campaigned alongside Forsyth against Scottish devolution in the 1997 election, will warn that a deal would leave Labour leader Ed Miliband open to a “daily dose of political blackmail” from the SNP. But the former chancellor Alistair Darling, who saved the UK as leader of the Better Together campaign in the Scottish independence referendum last year, warned that the Tories were risking the destruction of the UK by talking up the SNP.

Darling told the Guardian: “The Tories are entering into a dangerous, destructive embrace of the nationalists which is bad for Scotland, it is bad for the UK ... This will end up with the destruction of the UK.”

Forsyth raised similar concerns – though in more diplomatic language – as he spoke of the dangers for the Tories of appearing to will the SNP to success. The former MP for Stirling, who was close to Margaret Thatcher, told the Guardian: “We’ve had the dilemma for Conservatives, which is they want to be the largest party at Westminster and therefore some see the fact that the nationalists are going to take seats in Scotland will be helpful. But that is a short-term and dangerous view which threatens the integrity of our country.”

The former Scotland secretary illustrated his concerns about the way in which some Tories are building up the SNP by highlighting George Osborne’s praise for the SNP leader, Nicola Sturgeon, after her appearance in the first of the UK-wide TV election debates.



“Nicola Sturgeon does these debates and she’s praised to the skies,” Forsyth said. “We’ve had George Osborne praising her saying what a marvellous performance. What she is asking for, which is fiscal autonomy, would mean that there was a gap of £8bn in the budget.”

Forsyth claimed the Tories were partly responsible for the rise of the SNP after helping to prop up Alex Salmond’s minority government from 2007 to 2011, a move that gave Tory voters “permission” to support the SNP to keep out Labour.



In a blow to the prime minister, who claims that Labour is planning a secret post-election alliance with the SNP, Forsyth also praised the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, for the brave way in which he challenged Sturgeon in last week’s TV debate.

Forsyth’s intervention comes as other senior Tories and constitutional experts raise concerns about the way in which Cameron is seeking to shore up the Conservative vote in England by issuing dire warnings about the “terrifying prospect” of a Labour-SNP deal. Cameron warned on Monday that such a coalition would be a “match made in hell”.

Critics say the tactics are divisive, will polarise Scotland against England and will end up undermining Scottish support for the UK. Fears are being voiced that the highly contentious claims that Labour wants to form an alliance with a party committed to the breakup of the UK are inflicting severe damage on the largest pro-union party in Scotland in a move that will just end up boosting the case for independence.

Michael Forsyth at a devolution debate at the Scottish Tory party conference in Perth in 1997. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

Vernon Bogdanor, the prime minister’s former tutor at Oxford, who is now professor of government at King’s College London, told the Guardian it was dangerous to polarise Scotland against England.

In remarks that raise doubts about some of the prime minister’s central lines of attack on Miliband, Forsyth:



• Lauded Miliband for the brave way in which he challenged Sturgeon in their television encounter last week. He said: “Ed Miliband was actually rather good when he did actually for the first time seem to make it absolutely clear that his priority was to unite the country and to have nothing to do with the separatists. I thought that was a brave thing for him to do.”

• Claimed that the Conservative party was in part to blame for the rise of the SNP after it helped to prop up Alex Salmond’s minority government in the Scottish parliament between 2007 and 2011. He said: “The great irony of the SNP’s position now [is that] the Tories gave support to a nationalist minority government saying we could do business with them. The result was that in constituencies in the north-east of Scotland and so on, lots of Tories felt they had permission to vote SNP to keep Labour out. So you got tactical voting and that got the SNP into the Tory heartlands.”

• Challenged the way in which Cameron played the English card in the immediate aftermath of the Scottish independence referendum by offering English MPs a greater say over English-only laws. This was toughened up to a “veto” in the Conservative election manifesto.

Forsyth said: “David Cameron, instead of going up to Scotland the next day [after the referendum] and saying ‘look we’ve got to look at this now from the point of view of the whole United Kingdom’, started this English votes for English laws thing which was not really a unionist position and that shattered the unionist alliance against the breakup of the United Kingdom.

“I personally don’t support English votes for English laws. It doesn’t seem to me to be a very good policy to try and deal with the rise of Scottish nationalism by stirring up English nationalism. I think you have to, we need to find ways of binding the United Kingdom together, of binding that partnership together.”

The former Scotland secretary spoke out as his former Downing Street boss prepared to offer full-throated endorsement of Cameron’s warnings about the “frightening prospect” of a post-election deal between Labour and the SNP.

Major will say: “This is a recipe for mayhem. At the very moment our country needs a strong and stable government, we risk a weak and unstable one – pushed to the left by its allies and open to a daily dose of political blackmail.”

The prime minister claimed Labour and the SNP were “really on the same side” and therefore posed a threat to the future of the UK. He said at a campaign event in Crewe: “Make no mistake, if Labour and the SNP get into power, you are going to see an alliance between a party that wants to spend, borrow and tax more with a party that wants to spend, borrow and tax even more.

David Cameron during a visit to Arriva TrainCare maintenance plant in Crewe on Monday. Photograph: WPA Pool/Getty Images

The Tories illustrated these warnings by releasing a poster early in the campaign that featured a childlike Miliband in the breast pocket of a giant Alex Salmond. This has been replaced by a poster of Sturgeon as Miliband’s puppet master.

Miliband has ruled out forming a coalition with the SNP but has declined to dismiss a less formal arrangement for fear of appearing to disenfranchise Scottish voters. Opinion polls suggest the only viable government would involve some sort of deal between Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, which could win all Scotland’s 59 seats.

Darling emphatically rejected the idea of a Labour-SNP alliance. He told the Guardian: “The idea that Labour and the nationalists would enter into some sort of alliance is for the birds. It just isn’t going to happen. The reason for it is that the nationalists have no interest in maintaining a strong British government. Indeed their entire reason for their existence is to get out of the rest of Britain. This is all part of the Tory tactic of bigging up the SNP because they are failing to make progress on anything they’ve got to say.”

The former chancellor added: “David Cameron made a profound mistake on the morning after the referendum of letting the nationalists back in the front door by linking additional powers [to the Scottish parliament] with English votes [for English laws] and he is compounding it now. We have got just over two weeks to go. It is time they woke up and realised what they are doing before it is too late.”



Forsyth said questioning the legitimacy of SNP MPs by the Tories was unwise and ran counter to the assurances offered during the referendum about guaranteeing an inclusive UK.

Forsyth’s remarks have added resonance because he is an ardent Thatcherite and unionist who played a leading role in fighting Labour’s plans for a Scottish parliament in the 1997 election campaign.

Forsyth said he had limited sympathy for Labour, which was paying the price for adopting the language of nationalism in the 1980s by claiming that the Tories had no mandate to govern in Scotland. “The Labour party now find themselves surprised that they are being devoured by the nationalist tiger,” he said.