Tory has vowed to see off her fourth SNP Prime Minister by outlasting Liz Truss.
The First Minister threw down the gauntlet to her Westminster nemesis in a speech to an SNP away day for MSPs and MPs in Edinburgh, the Nicola Sturgeon can reveal. A source who attended the meeting last week said: “Nicola was very clear – she has already seen the back of three Tory PMs and she doesn’t expect Truss or Sunak to be the last.
“She told the group that she intends to see off whoever is announced as Tory leader this week.” Sturgeon has been locked in a war of words with Truss – who looks certain to win the keys to Downing Street tomorrow – after the Foreign Secretary called her an “attention seeker”.
The UK Government leader hit back that the only time they met, Truss asked how the FM got into fashion bible Vogue. There has been speculation in recent weeks that Sturgeon is planning her departure from frontline politics.
But this direct challenge to the next prime minister will be seen as evidence the First Minister intends to remain in office for the foreseeable future. She today hit out at a Scottish Parliament in “hibernation” as a result of the leadership contest and vowed to tackle the cost-of-living crisis ahead of the publication of her Programme for Government on Tuesday.
She said: “The steps we outline will build on the actions we have already taken with the limited powers of the from Balmoral. to support household budgets, such as the Scottish Child Payment, the Carers Allowance Supplement and the Council Tax Reduction Scheme.
"However, the key levers in this crisis remain in the hands of the Tories at Westminster – a government which has been in hibernation over the summer as the Tory faithful choose who will be the fourth prime minister in six years.
“Their inaction has caused huge anxiety for families and huge uncertainty for businesses. It has been a dereliction of duty which people will neither forgive nor forget.
“At this most crucial of times we are in the situation of announcing our plans for the year ahead in an unprecedented cloud of Westminster uncertainty. We don’t know if and when an emergency budget may happen, whether Scotland’s block grant is going to be cut this year, or what other measures they may introduce – all of which could fundamentally affect our plans.”
Truss will need to travel from London to Aberdeenshire to become prime minister and it is unclear whether she will meet Sturgeon while in Scotland. For the first time in her 70-year reign, the Queen will ask the leader of the largest party in the Commons to form a government from Balmoral.
Boris Johnson will also need to go to see Her Majesty before he can formally quit. The 96-year-old monarch has been in Scotland for her usual summer break and is too frail to return to London.
A Buckingham Palace spokesman said: “The Queen will receive Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday September 6 at Balmoral, followed by an audience with the new PM.”
The First Minister has insisted she would seek to “work constructively” with the next prime minister despite public spats with both Truss and Rishi Sunak throughout the campaign. She also claimed an independent Scotland could have passed an emergency budget, adding: “Instead we are left wrestling with meeting the challenges of fair pay, household hardship and rising costs for public services without the tools we need to tackle them.
“People in Scotland will be watching carefully how Westminster responds to the current emergency facing the UK. The ‘broad shoulders’ that we were told existed in 2014 are nowhere to be seen, and the promise of remaining in the EU and of lower energy bills were evidently not worth the paper they were written on.
“Instead, a decade of austerity, Brexit and brutal welfare cuts have contributed hugely to the current cost crisis.”
Truss is the clear favourite to win, according to polls of Tory members, and has promised to deliver billions of pounds in tax cuts in an emergency Budget. But she will come under immediate pressure to tackle the rising cost of living due to soaring energy prices.
Truss has said she will reverse April’s rise to National Insurance and cut green levies on energy bills to help households with costs. And while she has signalled she will provide more support on top of this, no details have been given.
Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said: “Tomorrow, just 160,000 Tory members will inflict a new Prime Minister on our country. Like many people, I breathed a sigh of relief when Boris Johnson resigned but my relief at his departure was short-lived.
“Instead of the fresh start our country needs, the best the Tories can deliver is more deceit, division, and distraction. All the while, families worry about how they will afford spiralling bills and sky-high energy costs.
“The cost of living crisis is the number one issue facing families today, and the Tories have no answers. The same is true in Scotland.
"The SNP have rightly demanded that the Tory government acts to tackle this crisis. But the fact is that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are not commentators on this crisis – they are the Scottish Government.”
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton added: “Assuming Liz Truss does become our new prime minister, she will have to leave petty playground politics at the door and get on with the job of combating some of the biggest crises to have ever faced Scotland. The top priority has to be providing support for households to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.
“Truss needs to deliver an economic strategy that will fully support people across Scotland in their time of need. That means scrapping the rise to the energy price cap in October, introducing a windfall tax on the huge profits of oil and gas companies and offering an energy bailout to struggling businesses.
“Truss also needs to scrap the national insurance hike and cut VAT to provide households with further support. So far, she hasn’t done much to inspire Scottish voters that she will be a strong advocate for Scotland.
“Dismissing the First Minister as an ‘attention-seeker’ might play well with the most extreme voices on the Unionist side but it offers more ammunition to an SNP administration that will take any opportunity to paint their UK counterparts as dismissive and out-of-touch.”
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