Nicola Sturgeon is getting better. On the day that draft legislation to implement proposals from the Smith commission has been published the first minister will have known there would be greater than usual attention on first minister’s questions. Her tendency in recent weeks to adopt some of her predecessor’s less attractive debating qualities has been tempered. However, she continues to make Alex Salmond’s mistake of using a polished performance to mask a lack of substantive policy answers.

Not for the first time, Kezia Dugdale led on the National Health Service crisis facing Scotland. Choosing to talk about accident and emergence units and not proposed devolution legislation was a smart move. It denied Sturgeon the opportunity to cry betrayal at the outset and demonstrated that for Scottish Labour, constitutional reform, albeit important, must not come before healing and helping people. Exposing the Scottish National party’s lack of action in this devolved policy area will clearly be a key part of Scottish Labour’s general election campaign. The NHS is an issue on which Labour, in all parts of the United Kingdom, must win. Unfortunately, Sturgeon was not wrong when she said that at the moment Scots trust the SNP over Labour with the health service. Kezia’s performance today should begin to turn that around. Highlighting the fact that patient numbers have increased at a rate much higher that staff numbers, Kezia developed an effective argument. Her contention was that under the SNP, Scotland’s NHS has not kept up with the needs of Scottish patients. Sturgeon’s response that she is ‘well aware of the pressures on the NHS’ only served to focus attention on the crucial difference between being aware of a problem and taking action to solve it. This helped build on the overarching narrative of Kezia’s FMQs appearances so far: the SNP is not using the powers of the devolved administration to tackle Scotland’s problems.

Today’s FMQs also served to give us a glimpse of how the SNP will attack Labour in the coming months: adopt the Tory line that Labour have no economic credibility. Talking of ‘fantasy economics’ and Ed Miliband’s poor personal poll ratings are bread and butter Conservative central headquarters attack lines. Coupling this with the normal nationalist narrative that Labour and the Conservatives represent a political elite out of touch with Scotland is a potentially risky strategy for the SNP. Sturgeon today attacked Labour for ‘endorsing Tory austerity’ while also rubbishing Jim Murphy’s proposed spending plans. The SNP cannot have it both ways and Kezia should use future weeks to attack this inconsistency. To shift the polls and the voters they represent, Labour must continue talking about practical solutions to the problems facing the health service and the SNP need to be exposed for having run out of ideas for Scotland.

Away from party politics, Ken Macintosh was right to raise the concerns of Scotland’s Jewish population in light of the rise in antisemitic attacks. Member of the Scottish parliament from across the chamber joined his calls for the Scottish government to protect the Jewish community and unreservedly condemn both physical and verbal attacks against it.

Overall today was probably a score draw. In the few weeks before the general election, Kezia needs to keep up the pressure on Sturgeon and make these sessions about the first minister’s failure to take action on Scotland’s pressing problems. More importantly, Scottish Labour must continue articulating a patriotic, progressive alternative to the limits of nationalism. It is certainly not going to be easy, but by now at least no one is any doubt we have the best team to do it.

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Callum Munro is communications and policy officer at Community the union. He tweets @Callum_Munro