Eddie Barnes: Reforms in the health service could leave unionists feeling very ill if the SNP is allowed to defend the NHS

NICOLA Sturgeon's speech to the SNP party conference was laden with news lines, from her decision to axe 25 per cent of top NHS managers to ending prescription charges. Consequently, a fascinating political element within her address in Perth has been largely ignored.

The Health Secretary twice referred to "the Scottish National Health Service". In earlier drafts, the phrase appeared several more times but the ever-cautious Nats decided not to gild the lily too much, wary of stretching a political point too far. Nonetheless, they wanted to make that point. NHS Scotland – to give it its real name – was being subtly re-branded to be aligned with the Scottish Nationalist cause.

Andrew Marr once compared the union between Scotland and England to two pieces of pizza gradually being pulled apart. All that held them together, Marr claimed, was the cheese on top. Since its creation, the NHS has been a key institution that holds the country together. You break a leg in Brighton or Banff, it doesn't matter; the principles upon which healthcare are based are the same wherever you live. The NHS was one of Gordon Brown's lodestars during his clumsy bid two years ago to define bonds that bind us: it defines Britishness.

But Ms Sturgeon was effectively saying this is no longer the case.

Cleverly, she smuggled her political argument under cover of the radical reforms taking place in England. Over the summer, the Coalition announced a huge change to the way the health service will be run south of the Border. Primary Care Trusts have been abolished and GPs will be given complete control of their patient's "journey". If that means buying services from the private sector, so be it.

In conservative Scotland, naturally, none of these reforms are taking place. Our health boards will remain in control, implementing nationwide targets and standards. Who knows which vision will perform best and give patients the best care? But the point is they are very different visions indeed. And it allows the argument to be made that we do genuinely now have an English health service, and a Scottish one.

The SNP now hopes to cast itself as protector of the "real NHS", with Ms Sturgeon claiming reforms could end the NHS down south as we know it. When I put it to a senior Nationalist last week in Perth that the SNP now saw themselves as the guardians of the "authentic" NHS, the NHS of Bevan, he agreed readily.

The political aim of all this, of course, is to both highlight and tease further apart the differences between England and Scotland. It is about showing that politically and culturally, they are on different paths. I expect we will be hearing a lot more about "the Scottish National Health Service", as the SNP attempts to co-opt it into a nationalist narrative. Scotland is already independent in law-making, religion, and education. If the NHS can be added to that list, another bit of Marr's cheese will be stretched, perhaps to breaking point.