IT’S time for a word in season to Scottish socialists. This word has be spoken in the light of the report from Andrew Wilson’s growth commission.

And here’s the word: there’s not going to be any Scottish socialism, at least no more than we’ve got already. Scottish socialism has peaked, as the psephologists say, and quite a long time ago.

Those lefties who over the weekend have started to disparage the report had better be clear what they are pitting themselves against. This is one of the longest, and in any case the most up-to-date, examinations of the Scottish economy there has ever been. And while people might balk at some of the conclusions (I do so myself), there can be no doubt they are soundly based and sensibly argued. I would like to see the Scottish socialist who could from his or her own side produce an equivalent to Andrew’s hundreds of pages of cogent reasoning.

Scottish socialism has by contrast long been no more than a ghostly apparition, an empty shell, a hollow gong, a tinkling cymbal, a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, not worth the quite small bits of paper it’s written on. That much is demonstrated by how hard it has become to persuade anybody, even those who call themselves socialists, to say exactly what it is. From this column I have often invited them to do so, but have never been favoured with any response.

So let’s start from basics. I suppose that, in the UK context, socialism is most commonly understood in the terms laid down by the old Clause IV of the 1918 constitution of the Labour Party: “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange”. In other words, from the car you drive to the pint of milk you buy in the corner shop, everything would be supplied by the state.

North Sea oil is still the biggest industry in Scotland, so this concept would mean presumably paying huge sums to mighty multinationals to take over what are now wasting assets – and paying the costs of decommissioning the oil rigs too. That should take care of our gross domestic product for a few years. Our biggest onshore company is Standard Life, which has been threatening to decamp ever since the first whisper of devolution. For it to be nationalised within Scotland would make no difference to the fact that the vast bulk of its transactions take place beyond Scotland, so it could re-establish itself anywhere else in the world it wanted.

Amazingly, despite the hostile atmosphere at home, we have continued to produce a steady stream of entrepreneurs, whose wealth has come not from inheritance but has been created by themselves. If there were no place for them in a socialist Scotland, they would just take their talents elsewhere and emigrate to create jobs for the people of other nations. They would still leave behind the 99% of businesses in Scotland that are small businesses. The butcher, the baker – are they all to be taken into public ownership?

If Scottish socialism cannot credibly be about public ownership, what else might it be about? Nowadays it seems to come down to public expenditure, with the Finance Secretary Derek Mackay determined to max out the borrowing he is allowed inside the UK fiscal system. This itself has a deficit of £43 billion – what the Scottish Government defines as “austerity”. The end of austerity presumably means spending still more so as to increase the deficit to whatever level the international money markets would tolerate without causing a run on the pound. So far they have caused us no trouble because the UK borrows long and has an excellent record of meeting its obligations.

Many other countries do not. I’m afraid they might include a newly independent Scotland, as it would have no borrowing history that lenders could assess. Our government would simply be counted among those many other governments in the world who always want to spend more money than they have or can raise from their own grudging taxpayers.

It is a basic condition of modern democratic politics. There are a few exceptions – Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and now Emmanuel Macron’s France. But in general the aim of Western politicians is to dig into the pork-barrel, to use whatever money they can get hold of to buy off or butter up special-interest groups for the sake of the votes these will bring with them at future elections. This is the system we have now in Scotland, and I can see the interest of socialists in enlarging it. That could not be done should Andrew Wilson get his way.

If Scottish socialism cannot credibly be about public expenditure either, what do we have left? The most overused word in our politics is equality, held up as an absolute value without reference to other values, such as freedom or diversity, that might have some merit of their own. Of course there are certain types of equality – equality before the law, equality of political rights – that are essential to a democratic society. But I do not believe economic equality should be counted among them. I have written on this subject too often to go into it again here. Enough to say that a lot of inequality – related to age, or experience, or qualification – is the explicit desire of the Scottish working class itself, secured by trade unions at the cost of industrial conflict.

The Red Clydesiders fought not for equality but for the restoration of differentials. Today’s egalitarians tend only to have read about such stuff while they were at university.

At a key point in Darren McGarvey’s great book Poverty Safari (best of luck with the Orwell Prize, Loki), he asks: “What do we have to say to the people who won’t be around when the third industrial revolution begins? The people who’ll never see Universal Basic Income rolled out? Well, I suppose we could start by being honest: There will be no revolution. Not in your lifetime. The system will limp on and so must we.”

But I think Andrew Wilson shows us that, in Scotland, we do have a window of opportunity when we can stop limping on and quicken our pace, perhaps even start running: not a revolution, but a fresh start. From this window we gaze out on two prospects. One is for continued subordination inside the UK, with a stagnating economy sustained by subsidy, under economic policies always determined by the desires of richer and more politically influential regions.

So, for example, we will not be allowed the immigration of workers we need to prosper, and Scottish canniness will be subverted by asset bubbles deliberately created to give metropolitan speculators full rein. In this regime don’t expect Scotland to achieve anything more.

The other prospect is for independence – which will certainly not be free of difficulties, though none greater than many countries have faced and overcome. After an inevitably unsettling transition, Scots will no longer rely on others but take responsibility for ourselves, pursuing our own interests in the ways that seem best to us.

For myself, I don’t see that as a description of socialism. While mistakes doubtless will be made, I cannot believe Scotland alone, of all the nations in the world, will fail in taking on such a stern duty to itself.