Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Nicola Sturgeon: the SNP would welcome uncomfortable scrutiny

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’.

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