SCOTTISH LABOUR should ditch alliances with rightwingers and “look for coalitions on the left,” party leader Richard Leonard said at the weekend.

Speaking at the People’s Assembly Scotland conference, Mr Leonard put meat on the bones of his plans for a wealth tax and slammed the SNP government for its “complete denial” regarding the plight of precarious workers.

Signalling his rejection of Labour’s alliance with the Conservatives during the 2014 independence referendum campaign, he said: “There have been times when Labour has looked for comfort … and coalitions on the right.

“It’s about time we looked for coalitions on the left.”

Mr Leonard has used two of his recent appearances at First Minister’s questions in Holyrood to press Nicola Sturgeon over the use of exploitative umbrella companies to employ construction workers on a key roads project around Aberdeen.

Speaking in Glasgow on Saturday, Mr Leonard said Ms Sturgeon’s argument that workers were offered a “choice” of employment status showed a “complete denial of the real world for working people.”

He went on to argue that “Keynesian social democracy is insufficient to the challenges that we face” and argued that Labour must seek to reduce wealth inequalities as well as income differences.

Asked by the Morning Star to elaborate on his plans for tackling wealth inequality, he said it would be a “dereliction of duty” not to do so.

“I don’t see why taxation on unearned income should be levied at a lower rate” than income tax, he said.

“The time is absolutely right to consider a wealth tax.”

He stressed that Scotland would have to learn from the examples of other countries, where wealth taxes have been met with canny new avoidance tactics.

SNP MP Chris Stephens, who also addressed the conference, argued that there would have to be a tough framework to prevent Scots from moving their wealth south.

“It is a fact that people register in England and Wales to avoid tax in Scotland,” he said. “There’s only one phrase for that, and that’s tax avoidance.”

The conference also saw the launch of the Scottish group’s version of the In Place of Austerity manifesto, which calls for “rebuilding public services” through a clampdown of tax avoidance and evasion and an increase in taxation on the wealthy and big business.