Protect your first born! SNP’s Herod on the warpath

In an interview before unveiling the SNP manifesto (No to Trident, No to austerity, Yes to more spending), Nicola Sturgeon has told The Guardian she wants to use the expected surge in SNP representation at Westminster to force a Miliband government to change course and be “more progressive”.

“With fixed-term parliaments, it gives parties in a minority-government situation – [where] hopefully the SNP will be in a position of influence – huge ability to change the direction of a government without bringing a government down.”

Her words are music to the ears of the Conservative camp, with Boris Johnson even invoking baby-killer King Herod.

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Having played the leadership card (Miliband is power-crazed and not up to running the country) and the economy card (it's boom time under me, don't wreck it by voting for him), David Cameron has failed to find a game-changer. He now believes that Sturgeon has provided it.

• What's in the SNP manifesto? The Week's summary

Having cut her teeth on the rough street politics of Glasgow, Sturgeon can sound to many Labour voters a more authentic voice of the downtrodden than Miliband.

But she is just the bogeywoman the Tories need to put the frighteners on the middle classes of England with the threat that she won't just reign in Holyrood – she’ll run Miliband too.

The threat to paralyse government business for England unless the SNP gets its way was made even clearer by deputy leader Stewart Hosie yesterday.

Hosie told the Scottish Sunday Politics (not seen in England) that if a minority Labour government fails to reach an agreement with the SNP then it will vote against "any bit of spending" that it doesn't agree with, such as the Trident replacement.

Cameron told the BBC's Andrew Marr yesterday: “This would be the first time in our history that a group of nationalists from one part of our country would be involved in altering the direction of our country, and I think that is a frightening prospect.”

Others reaching for the Tory book of scare tactics include party chairman Grant Shapps, who says: "The SNP are threatening to hold Britain to ransom to guarantee an Ed Miliband government gives them what they want – weaker defences, more borrowing, more debt and more taxes."

Dominic Lawson, writing in the Daily Mail, compares the tactics of some supporters of the SNP to fascists.

Under the headline ‘Scottish Nasty Party and how its growing intimidation and intolerance of dissent reeks of fascism’, Lawson says SNP supporters are "increasingly engaged in the kind of street-by-street intimidation of opponents that we would more normally associate with fascists.

"The windows of the Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party offices in Aberdeen have been spray-painted with the word 'scum' and the unmistakable sign of the swastika. The front door has been similarly defaced with a giant letter Q, for Quisling: that is, traitor."

Tomorrow the Tories will pull out their secret weapon - Sir John Major, the former Prime Minister, who has a long record of fighting for the Union. He will make a separate speech about the threat posed by the SNP.

In the meantime, we must make do with Boris Johnson's take on the subject. In his Daily Telegraph column, the Mayor of London asks: "You wouldn't get Herod to run a baby farm, would you?

"So can someone tell me why in the name of all that is holy there are some apparently rational people who are even contemplating the elevation of the SNP to a position of effective dominance in the government of the United Kingdom - an entity that they are sworn to destroy?”

Sturgeon as Herod, a leader prepared to commit any crime in order to gratify their unbounded ambition? Now we’re talking.