Tom Peterkin: Head-in-the-sand economics avoids risk of the key policies getting the chop … for now

So where will John Swinney's axe eventually fall? That was the question dominating the SNP conference last night as it emerged that yet another SNP populist policy is to be spared the cuts that we once thought were coming our way.

Hot on the heels of Mr Swinney's declaration that council tax was to be frozen for another couple of years, Nicola Sturgeon got in on the act and announced that she would keep her promise to abolish prescription charges.

It was back in June that Crawford Beveridge produced his impressively detailed Independent Budget Review Report, which outlined the areas in the public sector that were ripe for cutting.

Since then, people have - not unreasonably - been asking what is up for the chop.

But rather than facing up to the harsh realities of the economic crisis, all the SNP have done is identify which expensive policies are to be saved.

The reason for this "head-in-the-sand economics" is clear. In less than five months' time there is a Scottish election. And already the SNP are gearing up for it. Their reluctance to ditch populist policies is seen to be a vote winner.

But one suspects that the public has a slightly more sophisticated understanding of the severity of the economic situation than SNP ministers appear to.

It is fairly clear that tough decisions have to be made and that they have to be made with a certain amount of alacrity.

After all, it is only a few weeks before Mr Swinney must produce a budget that is capable of securing enough parliamentary support to get through Holyrood.

To do that he will have to take a couple of economic reality pills.

Whether or not retaining populist policies does, in fact, turn out to be a vote winner is a moot point.

After all, some of the SNP's election pledges in this parliamentary term have not stayed the course.

Whatever happened to Alex Salmond's independence referendum? The SNP's vote winning plan for a local income tax was also a casualty of the parliamentary arithmetic.

The SNP may have appeared to have stolen a march on their rivals by unveiling some populist initiatives at conference. But there is a long road yet to be travelled before 1 May.

And while Labour leader Iain Gray may have boxed himself into a bit of a corner over the council tax, there is much fighting yet to be done and much can be won and lost over the next few months.