FOR the past few years the Scottish Government had shown little interest in what I always identify as the country’s basic problem: the need to raise its miserable rate of economic growth.

Not only would this make Scots richer - a desirable aim in itself. But it is also the key to our future as an independent nation. For most of us, when it comes to our political choices, they are a matter of material calculation. We ask as we go along to the polling station if this party or that policy will place more resources at the disposal of ourselves, our families and our communities.

Of course there are some voters who, in a highly idealistic manner, put the cause of national independence above everything else and opt for it regardless of any economic outcome it might entail. But the great majority ask, in the normal way of every modern democracy: what’s in it for me? Indeed, it was and is the purpose of modern democracy to give scope for this realisation of personal goals.

Logically, then, economic growth should be at the top of the SNP’s agenda. Yet the ruling party normally prioritises other matters - especially equality - which have no clear connection with growth and which could even be a hindrance to it. More equal but more needy? I’m not sure many Scots espouse this as the ideal collective future, which makes it all the less likely they will gamble on it in indyref2.

Now there may be a change of heart in the Scottish Government. The last couple of years have not been good for it. The national cause languishes, little talked about even at Holyrood, let alone in pubs and clubs, in buses and trains, as in 2014. In the all-consuming affair of Brexit, Scotland is just ignored. A kick-start of some sort is needed. Conceivably, it could be economic.

That, at any rate, is what I have taken from observing the progress of our Finance Secretary, Derek Mackay. So far I have always seen him as a dim lefty with little idea what the economy needs. For instance, his first exercise of the new powers that arrived on his desk thanks to the Scotland Act 2013 showed him making taxation more progressive but in such a timid fashion that it could never achieve much impact in the real world. He wanted to demonstrate egalitarian credentials without frightening anybody, especially not those who would need to pay for the equality of others out of their own pockets. So what we got was gesture politics.

Yet Mackay has just pleasantly surprised me by relaunching the Scottish Growth Scheme, to give businesses wanting to expand access to more than £100 million of government money. The scheme had actually been going since 2017 without, it must be said, achieving much. It has seemed to be just another of the many sorts of virtuous subsidy that the government announces from time to time – but then, having garnered favourable publicity, forgets all about. Researchers at the Fraser of Allander Institute recently drew attention to this as a fixture of policy-making in Scotland. They suggested it as one reason why the economy was adrift, stuck in a self-reinforcing cycle of low investment, sluggish growth and stagnant living standards.

Now the aim is to direct the aid towards small and medium enterprises (SMEs), those ranging from one-man or one-woman operations up to budding businesses with 50 employees. They are at the same time the great hope and the biggest problem of the economy.

They account for 99% of all the 350,000 active enterprises in Scotland. They are the seeds of prosperity and the source of future jobs. Yet this sector is, by international standards, listless.

It is overall not very go-ahead and it does not expand much. From my financier friends, I learn it does not generate many projects they think worth backing. But financiers are not always right, as in Scotland we know to our cost.

At any rate, one of the difficulties is that such small companies find it hard to get access to capital if they do want to innovate. In the past they would normally have turned to the local bank manager, but that was in the days before the Scottish banks decided the best policy for SMEs was to eat them alive, to drive them into bankruptcy and then seize their assets. Even in today’s calmer conditions, a large number go bust during the first couple of years after start-up because in that time they cannot reach a high enough level of earnings to service the cost of the initial investment. There may be many kinds of problems, but certainly one of them is often financial. If this goes on, Scotland’s economy can only ever grow slowly, perhaps even more slowly than now.

Here is what Mackay had to say on the subject: “This next phase of the Scottish Growth Scheme will unlock substantial investment for the most ambitious of new and existing businesses, helping them to scale up for the future.

“Amid the uncertainty of Brexit, it’s important that the wider business community remains confident that access to finance should not hinder their ambition or growth. This direct investment will boost the economy and give even more companies access to vital capital.”

It is good to hear a minister in the Scottish Government actually use the word capital in a positive sense and I look forward to him and his colleagues going the whole hog and mentioning the full-out word capitalism in equally approving terms. After all, the Scotland of the future is still going to be a capitalist country, not a socialist one as many supporters of independence fondly imagine. There is simply no other way to run a country in the 21st century, unless we want to end up like Venezuela.

Of course, it is still always possible to run a capitalist country badly, as Italy and Greece have been run. There are many pitfalls along the capitalist road, and in Scotland we should be aware of them. For instance, another of our government’s schemes is the Scottish Business Pledge, which asks companies to sign up to various politically correct aspirations in return for official favours. Of those 350,000 SMEs in Scotland, the number that have so far taken the pledge is 574. I think that tells us enough about how far business agrees with the government’s intentions for it, and how far the government understands business.

There is a long way to go, in other words, but at least a start has been made on Scotland’s journey towards being a normal, functioning, prosperous European economy. Whether it will also be an independent economy is a different question. I’m sure we can depend on the underlying capitalist instincts of the Scottish people, shown to good effect in history and today around the world outside Scotland.

One big question is whether the Scottish government can bring itself to accept those instincts as an indispensable part of our future. Otherwise this future is going to be obscure, provincial and poor.