Nats cackled like chickens as Nicola thundered on...

hears a preening First Minister at SNP conference

THE First Minister, who always seems to walk like a pair of scissors, clickety-clicks to the lectern as, before her, massed Nationalist delegates writhe and whoop and holler.

For an age she says absolutely nothing. Perhaps she is still trying to remember how much an independent Scotland will cost.

‘It’s great to be back in the Granite City,’ beams Nicola Sturgeon. ‘Aberdeen has had some tough times in recent years but is on the up again…’

The First Minister, too, has learned of late she no longer walks on water and can lose votes as well as win them. Gone is the strident, corseted and heavily detailed Totty Rocks suit in screaming socialist red.

She is today a vision in palest pink and panda-eyed make-up, as if she were about to meet Martin Bashir and lament the three people in her marriage.

She has just preened about renewables and now moves to Brexit. Against. Head inclined and virtue-signalling.

‘Westminster might want to create a hostile environment for migrants,’ yelps the First Minister, ‘but let me make clear that policy is not in our name.’

Mention of Westminster has the Nats instantly seething – a boiling mass of yellow and black like so many piranha who just got a glimpse of soft pink leg.

‘Drop your anti-migrant obsession,’ she thunders – not to them, of course, but to Theresa May and her government, none of whom is likely to be present. Delegates cheer and bay.

‘As long as the SNP remains in office,’ the First Minister iterates a tad randomly, ‘tuition fees are not coming back…’ She frowns, and lowers her voice just a little, as if at a church fête and about to impart some delicious gossip.

‘The European Withdrawal Bill is about to go before Parliament,’ she confides. ‘Concerning powers over Scotland’s agriculture, fishing, trade, consumer protection, the environment… powers that really matter.’

Powers, indeed, that mattered so much that only two years back she campaigned for Brussels to hang on to every last one of them.

Ruth Davidson, she hisses, voted against those powers being automatically handed over to a devolved Scotland. ‘Friends, that is completely unacceptable. Ruth Davidson’s rhetoric very rarely survives contact with reality’ – Sturgeon underlines this with her least nice smile – ‘but that took hypocrisy to a whole new level.

‘The Tories cannot be trusted with the Scottish parliament. Jacob Rees-Mogg, member of Parliament for the 19th Century’ – and the very mention of the languid Ampleforth alumnus has the Nats cackling like belligerent chickens – ‘is waiting in the wings to drag us back 200 years. Where he will no doubt find the DUP waiting for him…’

‘And, even among the Tories,’ yips the First Minister, ‘there can rarely have been an individual

such a liability as Boris Johnson!’ There are happy howls of hate in response.

‘This UK government has been a shambles,’ declares Sturgeon. ‘It is reckless, it is heartless and the sooner it holds no more power over Scotland the better.’

‘We’re the party,’ she reminds us, ‘who ask people to pay a wee bit more in tax to help protect public services…’

People like doctors, nurses, senior teachers and police officers. People like you, not gazillionaires with acres of rough shooting. She congratulates the Scottish Government – which is, to say, herself – on winning minimum pricing of alcohol.

‘Westminster punishes the poor and the sick. The Scottish Government treats everyone with respect!’ (Ruth Davidson, Rees-Mogg and BoJo might fairly demur here).

‘From the summer backdated to April, we will increase Carer’s Allowance by £500 a year. We are providing help to those who need it,’ she carols, booting up the minimum salary at which Roderick and Fiona must start paying off their student loans, conferring £8,000 annual grants on ‘care-experienced young people’ and almost casually giving everyone in the NHS a 3 per cent pay rise.

SCOTLAND faces challenges in this uncertain world,’ sighs Sturgeon, who has read out all her tractor production statistics and is now at the Department of the Bleedin’ Obvious. ‘It’s time to believe that we can. That we can build that bolder, better country – and, friends, we know we will!’

There is strange, if presumably stirring music and the Scottish Cabinet rises to lead a spontaneous standing ovation. The First Minister descends to embrace the faithful. I still think she walks like a pair of scissors.