Guardian News and Media/London

David Cameron has been accused of hypocrisy after defending an unofficial pact between the Scottish Tories and Alex Salmond, despite repeatedly accusing Labour of plotting a “coalition nightmare” with the SNP at Westminster.
Scottish Labour said the prime minister was insulting voters after Cameron said it was “right at the time” for the then Scottish Tory leader, Annabel Goldie, to prop up Salmond’s first minority government by repeatedly voting through his budgets and legislation.
Data passed to the Guardian shows that the Scottish Tories helped the Scottish National party outvote Labour in 40% of all the divisions during Salmond’s first term as first minister, from 2007 to 2011, when the SNP had a single-seat majority over Labour.
New figures from the Scottish parliament’s information office show that the Tories helped the SNP defeat Labour 377 times in four years. Goldie and her 16 Tory MSPs won policy deals on drug rehabilitation, town centre regeneration funding and small business support in return.
That political stability helped Salmond to win a landslide victory in 2011, setting up Holyrood’s first outright majority government and paving the way for the independence referendum.
With the SNP poised to win a majority of Scotland’s 59 Commons seats and play an influential role at Westminster, the Conservatives have released a series of attack ads berating the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, for failing to explicitly rule out any sort of post-election deal with the SNP.
The ads have featured a miniature Miliband in Salmond’s jacket pocket and, in one animated film, the Labour leader dancing to a Scottish jig played by Salmond on a recorder. Meanwhile, Salmond and his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, now repeatedly attack Cameron, urging Labour to help them “lock the Tories out of power” at Westminster, even if the Tories win the most seats.
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour’s finance spokeswoman at Holyrood, said Cameron was treating voters like fools. “The SNP and the Tories working together wasn’t some quick fling - they were in a stable four-year relationship,” she said.
“Between 2007 and 2011 the Tories and the SNP voted with each other like neighbouring countries faithfully backing each other up in the Eurovision song contest. Both of them are insulting Scottish voters by trying to pretend otherwise.”
Cameron told the Guardian the two situations were very different.
“Annabel Goldie had a very clear rule: what she did in the Scottish parliament was right at the time and she had a red line that anything that threatened the integrity of the UK she wouldn’t take part in,” he said.
“As I say, this is different. This is the United Kingdom parliament and this would be forming an alliance with a party that simply has one aim and that is to break up the country the United Kingdom parliament is the sovereign body of.”