Reconnect With Labour Says Miliband

Ed Miliband will today urge Scots to reconnect with their Labour-supporting history.

The Labour leader will evoke the names of Labour's Scottish founder Keir Hardie and the architects of devolution John Smith and Donald Dewar, and ask Scots who their parents and grandparents would want to lead the country.

Polls suggest Labour is facing a wipeout in its former Scottish stronghold amid a post-independence referendum surge of support for the SNP.

But Mr Miliband will say nationalism never built a school or lifted people out of poverty''.

Speaking ahead of his visit to Scotland, he said: We could be under a week away from a Labour government

I don't want anyone here to look back and wish you had been part of the change we are going to make.

Because throughout Scotland's history, you have always been part of change. Always led change.

Imagine all the people you know who have built Labour in Scotland.

Your grandparents who fought for their rights in the shipyards and mines across this country.

Your mums and dads, many of whom delivered leaflets for Labour or knocked on doors.

Remember our great leaders, from Keir Hardie to Jennie Lee, John Smith to Donald Dewar. What would they want today?

We could be on the verge of electing a Labour government.

They would want to be part of it. They would want to be part of building the better future.

To be part of booking the removal vans that will roll up outside Downing Street next Friday.

So, let's come together and get the Labour government that Scotland needs to kick the Tories out on Thursday.

Don't gamble with the SNP. Guarantee change with Labour.

Remember, throughout history it's Labour values that have changed Scotland.

Nationalism never built a school. It never lifted people out of poverty. It never created a welfare state that healed the sick and protected our most vulnerable.

It is Labour values, Labour ideas and the determination of people across Scotland that has built this country to what it is today.''

A Conservative spokesman said: This is Ed Miliband's Mayday message to Scotland - a desperate plea as Labour faces wipeout by the Sturgeon tsunami.

Having made the humiliating journey to Russell Brand's house only to be rebuffed for the Greens, Ed Miliband is heading to Scotland cap in hand for votes invoking the past not focusing on the future.

It goes to show that, next Friday, Ed Miliband cannot be Prime Minister without being propped up by the SNP. If you want to stop that happening, vote Conservative on 7th May.''

SNP deputy leader Stewart Hosie said: The fact is that the towering figures of the Labour movement that Ed Miliband cites would no longer recognise what the Labour Party has become - a party that worked hand in glove with the Tories during the referendum and trooped through the voting lobbies with them at Westminster to support a further £30 billion of austerity cuts.

It is scarcely any wonder that Labour would rather look to the past when they offer people in Scotland so little ambition for the future.

In contrast to Labour, the SNP is offering a progressive alternative to austerity at this election. A strong team of SNP MPs will pursue progressive politics for the benefit of the whole UK, and provide backbone to a Labour Party which, left to its own devices, would simply continue the austerity agenda.''