Sturgeon: let’s get on with dumping the pound

NICOLA STURGEON yesterday urged SNP members to “get your jackets on” and sell to Scots their new policy of dumping the pound as soon as possible after independence.

The First Minister used her keynote speech to the SNP’S spring conference to announce the “biggest campaign on the economics of independence in our party’s history”.

Her address was overshadowed by her conference defeat the previous day when SNP members voted to fast-track the introduction of a new currency in a separate Scotland.

Ms Sturgeon, who has previously warned against dumping the pound, did not explicitly mention her party’s new policy in her speech at the Edinburgh gathering.

But, alluding to Saturday’s currency debate and vote, she said the “conversation” the party had held “is one we must now have with the country”.

She argued they would win a second independence referendum if they could demonstrate the economic benefits of separation and announced a new commission tasked with showing how the poor and pensioners would benefit.

Her speech came the day after SNP members voted by 781 to 729 for an amendment saying that the pound should be scrapped “as soon as practicable after independence day”.

Unveiling the economics campaign, she confirmed the party plans to distribute a “household guide” to separation to all 2.4 million Scottish households. “So friends, you know what that means. It is time to get your jackets on. We will set out an alternative to the inevitable economic decline of Brexit,” she said.

But Adam Tomkins, the Scottish Tories’ shadow constitution minister, said: “With her chaotic plan to dump the pound and push ahead with an unwanted referendum, Nicola Sturgeon has made it clear that she is more interested in her party’s narrow priorities, not those of the majority in Scotland.” ♦ Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, is expected this week to announce that 1p and 2p coins will not be scrapped following a review into their usage, a year after he described them as “obsolete”.