Ed Balls: SNP euro plans 'crackers'. Pic: © STV
The recession would have been an "utter catastrophe" for an independent Scotland, shadow chancellor Ed Balls has said.
Mr Balls said the notion of Scottish fiscal autonomy is "barmy" and claimed it would have led to catastrophe for Scotland.
Speaking alongside Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray in Edinburgh, Mr Balls also said First Minister Alex Salmond's previous statements about adopting the euro currency for Scotland was "totally crackers".
Labour's election campaign shifted this week from attacking the Conservatives in Westminster to attacking the SNP - and particularly its policy of independence.
Mr Balls, visiting a car dealership in the city, attacked Mr Salmond's calls for fiscal autonomy in Scotland. He said: "Does he still think that Scottish financial regulation should be separate from the UK even after what happened to RBS? It's completely barmy.
"Politics aside, economically it is madness to think that Scotland could do an Iceland or an Ireland and have its own financial regulation, its own interest rates, its own exchange rate. I can't think of anything that would be more disastrous for jobs.
"Ireland had their own corporation tax and it didn't do them much good.
"I think when you look at the package of Scotland going it alone on financial regulation, interest rates and exchange rates, if that had happened in the last five years it would have been a total and utter catastrophe for Scotland. Scotland would be in the same place or worse than Ireland or Iceland.
"And that's just fact. That's not politics, or conjecture, that's me talking as someone who could see what would have happened.
"And the idea that you could have somebody who showed so little economic judgment four years ago can now say ‘trust me on independence’ is absolutely baffling."
Speaking in 2009, Mr Salmond said "a very strong argument" exists for setting Scotland's autonomous fiscal powers "within a European euro context".
Reflecting on those statements Mr Balls said: "Does he still want to take Scotland into the euro? That's totally crackers."
Trams
Mr Gray and Mr Balls were speaking alongside Edinburgh councillor and Edinburgh Pentlands candidate Ricky Henderson.
Mr Gray said Labour would not provide any more funding for Edinburgh's trams. He said: "As Ricky knows, it’s always been a council project. The funding for it was provided when I was enterprise and transport minister, and in 2007 the auditor general looked at this project and found it to be in good health. And it’s since then that its run into problems.
"The SNP-Lib Dem council signed the contract that has caused so much difficulty and they’ve really reduced the project to a shambles. I think it’s embarrassing that a capital city can’t build the kind of tramline that you see in lots of cities in England, and indeed in Europe."
Finance Secretary John Swinney accused Mr Balls of "hypocrisy", saying he had "reduced Labour to a total laughing stock in Scotland".
He said: "Labour's campaign goes from bad to worse with its unremitting negativity, and London-based politicians talking down Scotland's abilities."
"Labour have abandoned their losing 2011 campaign theme of focusing on Westminster, and are reverting instead to their losing 2007 campaign of bashing the people's right to vote on independence in a referendum, even though every survey of public opinion demonstrates the popularity of a referendum to choose Scotland's future."
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