CASH CLINICS ‘REHEATED’

DEREK Mackay’s flagship conference policy announcement of financial health checks for older people and those on low incomes was “reheated”, opponents claim.

The Finance Secretary said the scheme would start next month.

Nicola Sturgeon announced the policy at the 2016 SNP conference

deftly done. Nicola Sturgeon effectively shelved talk of a second independence referendum campaign.

Sturgeon didn’t have the hardest leader’s conference speech to make – that was Theresa May’s.

But she made it look easy. It helps when you command your party as Sturgeon does.

Setting independence on a pilot light just three days after tens of thousands marched for the cause, that demonstrates the sway Sturgeon holds over nationalism.

She showed us the mountain tops, promising independence in her generation and she roused the hall by defiantly declaring to the Westminster Government: “You cannot and will not deny Scotland’s right to choose.”

So she pressed the right buttons but as for the how and the when, Sturgeon could not say.

We will only know while we’ve waited for the “fog of Brexit to clear”.

That could be years, it might be weeks.

Patience, she said, signalling the SNP leadership want to see the uncertainty of Brexit disappearing in the rear view mirror before taking another tilt.

Until then, there and included it in her recent programme for government.

Mackay also pledged to launch an economic action plan by the end of October.

Labour MSP James Kelly accused Mackay of “shameless soundbites and reheated announcements”.