AND so to Ayr Racecourse, to take part in the SNP’s National Assembly, discussing the report of the Sustainable Growth Commission. With Keith Brown MSP, the SNP’s new deputy leader, chairing the event and former MP Roger Mullin introducing the report, I expected the going to be good to soft, with the party’s three favourites – fiscal restraint, using Sterling and productivity growth – almost certain to stay the course.

It seemed likely that the moderation of the Commission’s report would crash into the idealism of party members. I wondered how much enthusiasm there would be for the commission’s programme with its emphasis on capacity-building and narrowly-defined economic sustainability. Or would people be demanding, even if implicitly, a much more expansionary economic policy?

At a glance, I could see that the typical participant was middle aged: grey hairs predominated. Keith Brown arrived looking crumpled, while Roger Mullin – a late substitute for the Commission’ chair, Andrew Wilson – was dapper. They started off the meeting perched in bucket chairs on a wee platform. The rest of us were in a horseshoe. It could have been an awayday for a Church of Scotland Presbytery, with Brown the moderator, and Mullin the visiting preacher

In setting the tone of the day, Brown explained that it should be about conversation, “allowing space for ideas and alternative thinking.” Everyone should feel that they were participating in decision-making, not just a consultation. To this end, the party has commissioned consultants to set up member-led conversations about the report, which will then be distilled into detailed feedback, a process which is very different from most government consultations with their pre-set questions.

We spent most of the morning warming up for discussions. Roger Mullin gave a masterly introduction to the key themes of the Commission’s work. His starting point was that economic success is far too important a matter to be left to economists. But he was working with very technical material – especially as he warmed to the task and started talking about the opportunities for tax simplification at independence.

As the day went on, I realised that the challenge is to find compelling stories about the economy, which draw on the Commission’s technical expertise but which remain focused on the bigger picture of what it will be like to live in an independent Scotland. There were many people who were dismayed by the adoption of GERS as a baseline for Scotland’s fiscal state, the willingness to rely on sterling as Scotland’s currency for an extended period, and the degree to which the report is written for specialists, with narrowly technical, repetitive writing and impenetrable analysis.

Mullin’s animation of the report was essential. He painted a picture of an independent Scotland, which would be more open, more concerned with equity, and more “talent-friendly” than the UK. He got a fair hearing. Perhaps it was inevitable that a meeting lasting almost the whole of Saturday would attract people interested in wide-ranging discussions, and who would wait patiently for some opportunity to make their point.

It was then up to the participants to come up with questions about which we thought it important to talk. Immediately, the conversation widened, going well beyond discussion of GERS and currency.

Many people wanted to put the Commission’s work to one side, and talk about what really mattered to them – whether that was political campaigning, or shaping economic opportunities, especially for young people and rural areas.

Having the freedom to talk freely pushed the discussions away from issues on which technical expertise might easily be brought to bear, and instead on to the interaction between society and the economy. Politics based on personal experience among very knowledgeable people became the baseline of many discussions. Listening to these conversations, the arguments were fast-moving and typically very interesting, but perhaps they threw up too many ideas. Writing this less than an hour after the meeting finished, I have the feeling that rather than grasping solid ideas firmly, they have turned to liquid and run through my fingers.

What effect will these discussions have on SNP policy? I remain sceptical. Passion and eloquence ensured that even within small groups, refining and summarising discussion was difficult. There is already a very substantial element of top-down analysis undertaken by the Commission. Complementing that with the bottom-up approach used in the National Assemblies will be challenging, with many ideas being lost along the way. But if the SNP wants to energise its membership and develop an economic policy framework which resonates widely, and which can be sold on the doorstep to people who are concerned about voting for independence, it needs to manage these opportunities well. That means being more innovative about policy, and taking more risks than the current policy framework contemplates.

Robbie Mochrie is an associate professor of economics at Heriot-Watt University

@mochrierobbie