DOES the Scottish public actually support land reform? It may seem like a strange, even dangerous question for a land reformer to ask. But to assume the Scottish Government can win a fair redistribution of Scottish land without vocal support may prove even dodgier.

Earlier this week, the Land Reform Minister addressed the Scottish Lands and Estates conference and assured a “sceptical” audience of landowners that the wider public backs land reform proposals.

Dr Aileen Macleod is absolutely right as 70 per cent of responses to the consultation document back government plans.

The total number of responses was just a few thousand. There’s nothing wrong with that. But politics is the art of compromise between noisy interests, and at the moment a tiny number of landowners is shouting, whilst the silent majority hauds its collective wheesht.

And that means the final legislation will certainly pay a great deal of attention to landowners and their lawyers but may not act boldly to transform the lives of tenants, employees and their families who cannot complain about the current set-up for fear of reprisals.

Nor will it fully reflect the interests of urban and rural Scots blocked from affordable homes by scarce, over-priced land which represents up to a third of total housing costs, and blocked from running community energy schemes which could end fuel poverty.

So why aren’t pro-land reform Scots making more noise? Well I asked on Twitter and got the following response: “I know it’s important but can we sort out education and the Scottish NHS first?” “Nope, it’s purely a political obsession.” “They will ruin the beautiful landscape with houses.” “Of course we want common ownership, as long as it’s not on our land.” “Most people have no knowledge of this issue. Needs education/publicity.”

For crying in a bucket.

Is this how Scots really feel?

Now I know its dangerous to scold the public for expressing views that don’t chime with my own – and it’s easy to read too much into social media. But these Twitter responses mirror conversations I’ve had with active, well-informed folk over the last two years.

Speaking about land reform in more than 300 meetings I invariably get no reaction to the fact 523 landowners own half of the private land in Scotland and 15 own 10 per cent of it. That situation is extraordinary, weird, unfair, and unlike any other democracy in the developed world. And yet, it evokes no anger, surprise or comment. This is how completely disconnected we have become from Scotland’s primary asset – after its people.

It’s also a measure of how technical the land reform debate has become – the government’s consultation exercise took me two days to complete. Nowhere in it could people simply say, “land must be much more affordable and available soon” – leaving politicians and civil servants to come up with ways to achieve that.

We have skipped over the emotions, the past, the facts and the affront to Scottish democracy to have a technocratic debate that few – save academics and those at the sharp end – can really own. Again, that was true of all political debate – until the independence referendum.

Then folk gripped by the democratic and emotional case for self-determination read up about everything from single currencies to the mechanism of EU entry. That same level of engagement is needed now to achieve far-reaching land reform, or the Establishment will conclude that Scots only get active when it’s a gladiatorial contest with David Cameron or Dennis Skinner at Westminster. It seems bizarre that 1.6 million Scots mobilized so impressively to seize political control from Westminster, yet remain unmoved by the near-monopoly of social control under our noses. To be fair, though, most feel that’s already on the way out. If landowners can complain – without correction – that a “Mugabe-style land raid,” is imminent, most Scots will presume the Government’s hard-to-understand reforms must be pretty tough.

The truth is they are a very modest package of measures, which will not cut the cost of land within the next decade – yet to stop emigration they must.

The present proposals do mean some really bad landowners will get weeded out but more will stay in place because locals won’t mount the open challenge needed to trigger ministerial involvement. Some landowners will involve communities in their plans – but if they conflict with local priorities, what next?

If land reform doesn’t get beefier, the system will stay.

And the system stinks.

Winston Churchill once said: “To not one improvement does the land monopolist contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is sensibly enhanced.” The Labour wartime Scottish Secretary Tom Johnston said: “ So long as half a dozen families own one half of Scotland, so long will countless families own none of it.”

It’s way past time for serious land reform in Scotland.

But if Scots really want it, we need to show it – before land reform is done and dusted for another generation.