Nicola Sturgeon has said the SNP would not enter into a formal coalition but has pledged support on an “issue-by-issue” basis to any anti-Conservative progressive alliance in a hung parliament.

Scotland’s first minister said she still expected a Conservative victory next Thursday but said the SNP could play a critical role in a hung parliament. “I don’t envisage any form of coalition but on an issue-by-issue basis to put forward progressive policies and see a progressive agenda,” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Friday.

“If there was to be a hung parliament and the parliamentary arithmetic allowed it, I would want the SNP to be part of a progressive alternative to a Conservative government, not in a coalition.”

Sturgeon suggested she could lend her support to a Labour government if its policies were in line with the SNP’s own. “We see some parties in this election, not least Labour, putting forward policies the SNP have already implemented in Scotland,” she said.

“If we are in that scenario, and I’m sceptical that we will be in that scenario … it means the electorate has decided that it doesn’t want either of the two main UK parties to govern with a free hand.”

The Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale, said Jeremy Corbyn, the UK Labour leader, had “100% refuted any idea of a deal, coalition or pact with the SNP”.

“He doesn’t believe the SNP are a progressive party … there’s nothing progressive about trying to break up the United Kingdom,” she told Today. Dugdale denied any independence referendum would be granted under a Labour government in exchange for SNP support.

“He [Corbyn] has been abundantly clear every time he is in Scotland and across the UK, it is his own words, in his own manifesto as well, a second referendum on independence is unnecessary and unwanted. We are against independence because of the austerity it would cause.”

Sturgeon admitted there had been “a significant narrowing of the polls” but said she thought the Conservatives were still on track to win the election. “They are no longer certain to get a larger majority, and in that scenario Scotland becomes centre stage. It could be the case that what determines whether Theresa May has a bigger majority is the outcome of the election in Scotland – that’s my key message.

“If we are in the scenario, [the electorate] want parties to talk to each other, so to refuse to do that would be against what the electorate wanted.”

The Scottish Tory leader, Ruth Davidson, dismissed the Labour surge in the polls, saying it was part of a media narrative to portray the race as close. “I think that people that have the experience need to hold their nerve, put your head down, keep working, because there is no substitute in an election for hard work,” she said.

Playing down the effect of the Conservative manifesto, including the misfire on social care, Davidson told Today: “I haven’t seen an election yet – and I’ve fought six of them as leader, plus two referenda – where it hasn’t been the media’s job to start creating expectation about the result by saying that the polls have narrowed and, funnily enough, two weeks out, they started that narrative, and it is continuing through to polling day.”

The shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, has said Labour would govern as a minority in parliament if it became the biggest party, in the hope that other parties would support it. “If we end up in a position where we are in a minority, we will go ahead and we will put forward a Queen’s speech and a budget, and if people want to vote for it then good,” she said on Thursday.



“If they don’t want to vote for it, they are going to have to go back and speak to their constituents and explain to them why it is we have a Tory government instead. If we are the largest party we go ahead, no deals, with our manifesto, with our budget and our Queen’s speech, and that’s the conversations we have had, that’s it, no deals.”

According to a new poll carried out by BMG for the Herald, the SNP is on course to lose several seats, including that of its deputy leader, Angus Robertson. The poll put support for the SNP at 43%, 13 points above the Scottish Conservatives on 30%, with Labour on 18%, the Liberal Democrats at 5% and the Scottish Greens at 2%.

The survey was carried out two weeks ago, before the Manchester attack and the row over the Conservative manifesto’s so-called “dementia tax”.