UKIP'S only elected politician north of the border has accused the SNP of attempting to transform Scotland into a "stripped pine, Scandinavian, peacenik, sauna republic" at a manifesto launch that went ahead without manifestos.

 

The party blamed a "bank holiday problem" for the lack of any Scottish manifestos at an event that was intended to reveal the contents of the document just three days before the general election. It faced further embarrassment after it emerged a website advertised prominently on banners did not exist.

David Coburn, the party's MEP for Scotland, asked voters to "give the amateurs a chance" in response to questions about his party's competence, arguing professional politicians had "screwed up and bankrupted the economy" at the launch event in a Falkirk hotel.

He also accused Nicola Sturgeon of attempting to drag Scotland back to a "William Wallace pre-industrial age", leaving people living without electricity in "mud huts" in one of several outspoken attacks on the nationalists.

He went on to brand wind turbines "oversized bird blenders" and spoke out in favour of the large-scale reindustrialisation of Scotland.

He said: "Our programme is jobs, jobs, jobs. We want to keep Grangemouth oil refinery open, and to do that, fracking may well be required if proved safe and wanted by the local people.

"In the modern day, we want to see the coal mines reopened. We're sitting on a pile of coal which industrialised Scotland in the nineteenth century, nowadays we have clean coal technology, we can eliminate nearly all emissions."

He then launched an attack on wind energy and what he branded "ridiculous overpriced windmills that destroy the Scottish countryside and ruin our tourist trading."

He added: "The SNP seem to want to throw us back into the days of William Wallace, and not in a martial way, but in a sitting in a mud hut with no electricity... well sorry, for the average person in a pebbledash in Glasgow or Edinburgh, I think that's a hard sell. I think they'll be voting for UKIP.

"Who's coming hundreds of miles to look at a load of ugly, German propellers? I don't think many people. What it does for bird life I can't begin to imagine. I refer to them as oversized bird blenders. I'm very keen on wildlife, I'm not keen on oversized bird blenders."

Mr Coburn, who reiterated his desire to take Britain out of the EU, predicted he would overturn odds of 100/1 to become an MP for Falkirk in two days' time. He claimed there were plenty of "quiet Ukip voters" but that people were frightened of showing support for parties other than the SNP because "nobody wants a brick through their windows."

Speaking about the party's call for a constitutional convention, Arthur Misty Thackeray, Ukip's Scottish chairman, said: "We accept we must now move towards a future-union framework. That framework will be some sort of federal variety, with four home nations having parliaments feeding in to a central parliament in Westminster."

The party's Scottish leadership also faced questions over the candidacy of John Myles, a Ukip candidate in Perth and North Perthshire, who is also standing as a councillor in Peterborough.

Scottish Conservative MSP Alex Johnstone said: "Normally I wouldn't give advice to our political opponents but it's usually a good idea to have copies of the manifesto you're launching when you launch it. As UKIP lumber from one fiasco to the next, their irrelevance in Scotland continues to be plain to see."