Gordon Brown: Cameron has hammered a nail into the coffin of the Union

Giving a lecture as he received an honorary doctorate from the University Glasgow, Brown also drew parallels between the rise of the Front National in France to the increased support for the SNP in Scotland, saying that it had been the same conditions which led to both parties’ surges.

In his speech, Brown said that the surge in support for the SNP in Scotland was down to globalisation, which had led to “the decline of Scottish cultural institutions, the declining appeal of the ruling British institutions” and “wave after wave of global change encouraging people in the rest of Europe back into identity politics just about everywhere”.

People in Europe were backing “anti-immigrant parties, xenophobic parties, anti-European parties” that are helping to re-enforce the identity of the voter against outside forces.

“Greece elects Trotskyite populists, France toys with the populist Le Pen family and of course inside Britain England has Ukip,” said Brown.

The support for the SNP, suggested Brown, was part of this trend.

Brown said that the thesis of speech was that the “problems that give birth to nationalism cannot be solved by nationalism. Indeed the problems that gave birth to nationalism can only be solved by moving beyond nationalism”.

Brown criticised Cameron for proposing English votes for English laws (Evel) in the immediate aftermath of the referendum result, and for undermining the Scottish Parliament with his plans to introduce the “Carlisle Principle” reporting on Scottish influence in the UK.

Brown said that this report “would stir up” anti-Scottish resentment among the English.

“If he follows through he has to inevitably try to curtail the powers of the Scottish Parliament – and would be hammering a further nail in the coffin of the Union by doing so,” Brown said.

Brown also claimed that the SNP were inventing “a new demand” every day of the general election campaign because they knew there was no chance of it being delivered and were secretly hoping for a Tory government.

The former Prime Minister even referenced the Scottish Office memo that claimed Nicola Sturgeon had told the French Ambassador that she wanted Cameron as Prime Minister. The memo was widely discredited, with both the First Minister and the French Ambassador claiming it was false and the Cabinet Secretary ordering an investigation into the affair.

Brown said that though the SNP said they wanted a Labour government in public, in private they wanted a Conservative government:

“You don’t need to read Scottish Office memos to know what they really want, for the SNP have never supported Labour at any time in any election.’’

Brown also criticised Nicola Sturgeon’s attacks on David Cameron over his position on the EU: “So she is in favour of cooperation unless it is Scotland’s partnership with England that is at issue and thus she has no answer to the question of why we should break all British links other than to retreat into an outdated 19th concept of absolute sovereignty.”

The former MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath then set out reasons for voters to come “back to Labour”.

He said: ‘‘It is clear that if we wake up on May 8 with SNP MPs and a Tory government, we face five more years of austerity, five more years of food banks, five more years of payday lenders, five more years of the bedroom tax and five more years of NHS neglect, while Labour can deliver urgent changes immediately: a war on unemployment and poverty paid [for] by the bankers’ bonus tax and a new financial deal for the NHS paid by the mansion tax.”

Stewart Hosie, Deputy Leader of the SNP, said: “Gordon Brown’s speech underlines Labour’s problems in Scotland, and he inadvertently helps to explain their decline in the polls. Mr Brown says that the Tories are ‘anti-Scottish’ – and yet he was happy to campaign shoulder to shoulder with David Cameron and the Tories in the referendum campaign.

“A vote for the SNP is a vote to make Scotland stronger at Westminster, and help deliver progressive politics across the UK. We can lock the Tories out of Downing Street.

“As Nicola Sturgeon has made crystal clear, the general election is not about independence or another referendum – it is about voting SNP to make Scotland’s voice heard at Westminster like never before, and end the austerity cuts.”

Brown claimed in his speech that only two doctors were serving the whole of Grangemouth. But NHS Forth Valley said that there were currently four doctors working for the practice in Kersiebank, which struggled after four doctors left in a short space of time.

The Board takes over the management of the practice tomorrow, which will, a spokesperson said, “ensure that patients continue to have access to high-quality local medical services”.