JOHN SWINNEY launched the SNP’s “left-of-centre” manifesto today as the First Mininster set out plans he hopes will stem the Labour tide.

Some polls are predicting the toughest election for his party since he last led it 20 years ago, but Mr Swinney’s SNP has pledged to break the “Labour-Conservative consensus.”

The 33-page paper proposed an “essentials guarantee” to ensure all UK residents can afford life’s essentials, as well as calling for a social tariff on utilities and an end to the two-child cap on benefits.

Mr Swinney called for Labour to abandon its commitment to Tory fiscal rules that could lead to “£18 billion pounds of cuts” and adopt his own, which includes limits on debt servicing costs, as well as renewing the Nato-supporting party’s pledge to scrap Trident.

Despite reaffirming his party’s calls for UK re-entry into the EU, at the manifesto launch in Edinburgh, Mr Swinney said: “We are a moderate left-of-centre party in the mainstream of Scottish public opinion, firmly rooted in the ideas of inclusion and internationalism. 

“We will always put the interests of people in Scotland first — wherever our people were born; wherever our people come from.

“And at the very heart of our beliefs is the principle that decisions about Scotland should be made by the people who live in Scotland.

“Why? For the simple reason that no-one else cares as much about this wonderful country, and no-one else will do a better job of taking care of it, now and in the future.”

He added: “I’m asking you to vote SNP to put the interests of people in Scotland first.

“I’m asking you to vote SNP for a future made in Scotland — for Scotland.”