Nicola Sturgeon spoke at the open and close of the SNP conference, and her speech today transposed the key themes of the short address she gave on Thursday morning. She attacked Jeremy Corbyn for disappointing her ‘high hopes’, saying ‘so far, Jeremy Corbyn isn’t changing Labour – he’s allowing Labour to change him’.
And she talked about independence, though in this speech the First Minister didn’t talk about when, but how. Her first speech had acknowledged that the party couldn’t commit to another referendum until there was evidence a majority of Scots were now in favour of leaving. Today she argued that ‘if we want Scotland to be independent – and we most certainly do – then we’ve got work to do’. She said the party needed to convince voters that ‘independence is the best future’. But in the next breath she also said that the party’s policies and record on jobs, schools and hospitals ‘matters just as much to people across Scotland’. And so she confronted the idea that the SNP’s record will be what holds it back in the Holyrood elections, saying ‘the other parties say they want to fight the election on our record. Well, I say “good”, because so do I’.
She listed what she sees as the SNP’s achievements in government. Our cover story this week takes a rather different line on this, but Sturgeon can say ‘bring it on’ to an election that’s all about the SNP’s record because that election will involve a mighty and united party fighting weak opponents who are in disarray. When Sturgeon said Scottish Labour serves one purpose for the SNP – to remind it of the dangers of complacency – she wasn’t being strictly accurate. Scottish Labour serves the purpose of being insufficiently strong to make life uncomfortable for the SNP.
Sturgeon’s delivery wasn’t the most captivating: she was often reading straight from her notes with her head down and her speech lacked variation in terms of tone and pace. But she did have some striking variations from Alex Salmond. At one point she even said the SNP would welcome uncomfortable scrutiny.
She closed her speech with an appeal to voters to trust her and the SNP, and a command to her party to ‘get out there. Let us win for Scotland’. And then came back on for a selfie on the stage.
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