GORDON Brown was last night accused of scaremongering after he warned the SNP would sabotage Scotland's future through inward-looking parochialism.
Opposition politicians attacked the Prime Minister's keynote speech as out of touch.
Nicola Sturgeon, the health secretary, said: "Labour have learned nothing from their election defeat last year. Gordon Brown came out with the same old
scaremongering nonsense that was wrong about the SNP and Scotland when we were in opposition, and is equally wrong now we are in government."
She argued that the SNP was more trusted on education, health, the economy and law and order than Labour.
Ms Sturgeon added: "Labour are in a mess and slumping in the polls. It is his dithering UK government that is holding Scotland back."
Professor Jonathon Tonge, head of politics at Liverpool University, said:
"Labour have the problem that they have not come to terms with the fact they lost the 2007 election.
"The people of Scotland know that when push comes to shove, the final verdict on whether Scotland should become independent lies with them in a referendum."
Meanwhile, on the economic arguments for staying in the Union, Prof Tonge said the case was unproven either way.
And he said that while Mr Brown was right to highlight Labour's credentials on presiding over a decade of stability, "people don't see Alex Salmond as a man who would set out to put Scotland on the economic rocks".
Robert Brown, the Lib Dems' chief whip, said Mr Brown's speech was "depressing and totally lacking vision".
He added: "Like an over-bearing father, Gordon Brown won't let go. The answer to the unpopular separatist agenda of the SNP is not more centralisation and Whitehall diktats but a commitment to bring power closer to the people.
"Scottish Labour is a Party paralysed by indecision, uncertainty and drift. When you look at Gordon Brown, what you see is the present fading into the past."
The full article contains 325 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
