John Swinney has doubled down on the Scottish National party’s core commitment to independence, telling voters that the general election is an opportunity to “intensify the pressure” on Westminster for a referendum. Launching what the SNP leader and Scottish first minister claimed was the most leftwing manifesto of the campaign in Edinburgh on Wednesday morning, Swinney also urged Scots to “have their eyes wide open [that] voting Labour in Scotland will get you spending cuts”. After criticism that his party had downplayed independence in the campaign so far, Swinney proudly displayed the first page of the slim manifesto document, which reads “vote SNP for Scotland to become an independent country”. He told an audience of candidates and activists that a mandate for a second independence referendum already existed. “In 2021 [the public] voted for a Scottish parliament with a clear majority for independence and for a referendum. That democratic choice must be respected. At this election we have the opportunity to reinforce the case for Scotland becoming an independent country,” he said. Swinney’s reiteration of the party’s founding principle comes after the party had endeavoured to move way from arguments about a referendum. Senior figures have acknowledged repeatedly that even those voters who support independence want the party to be more focused on their immediate cost of living concerns. Asked if a mandate for a second referendum would still exist if the party lost seats on 4 July – the SNP held 43 of Scotland’s 57 seats at the end of the last parliament but polling consistently indicates it will lose a significant number of these to Labour – Swinney responded that “people in Scotland should have their democratic wishes respected”. He said: “In this election if people want to intensify the pressure for a referendum on independence then their opportunity is to vote for the SNP to make that happen.” Swinney was elected leader a little over two weeks before the election was called, after the resignation of Humza Yousaf who had axed a governing partnership with the Greens at Holyrood. Swinney sought to differentiate his party from Labour in an effort to woo back independence supporters who are increasingly attracted to Keir Starmer’s message of change at Westminster. “Where’s the change?” he asked. “We’re going to carry on with two-child [benefits] limit, carry on with Tory fiscal rules, carry on with Brexit [under Labour].” He returned again and again to the dominant theme of the SNP’s campaign so far that Labour’s plans would involve an “eye-watering” £18bn-worth of cuts, which he said had been forecast by respected thinktanks such as the IFS, the Institute for Government and the Nuffield Foundation. He contrasted the SNP’s “hard decisions” at Holyrood – where income tax rates and bands are devolved – “to increase tax on higher earners so we could invest more in our public services” and he called on the next UK government to replicate those decisions. The manifesto calls for further devolution of tax and immigration powers and reiterates previous calls to reverse Brexit, abolish the House of Lords and scrap nuclear weapons. Swinney said “sensible fiscal rules” proposed in the manifesto would “end the cuts, reverse the £1.3bn cut to Scotland’s capital budget” and allow investment in public services, starting with the health service. He responded to the Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s pledge made at his own manifesto launch on Tuesday not to raise taxes should he be elected first minister at the Holyrood elections in 2026. “Anas Sarwar set out his determination to reverse the decisions we’ve taken on tax,” Swinney said. “Well, people need to have their eyes wide open. The Labour party committed themselves to cut public spending in Scotland, so people need to be aware of the consequences of voting Labour.” The manifesto also pledges that SNP MPs will press for the “deeply damaging” two-child benefit cap to be scrapped. Swinney suggested Labour was “morally lost” in not committing to doing so.