LIKE the First Minister, I am not an economist and like her, I take my cue on these matters from others. In her case Andrew Wilson, in mine the likes of George Kerevan, Professor Mike Danson, Margaret and Jim Cuthbert.
In my day role a senior trade union official I too have to remain open minded. That’s why I agree that there is much in the Growth Commission report that is perfectly unobjectionable. On the other hand the mammoth motion before us next Saturday is not perfect, as Amendment B indicates.

We must not lose sight of the fact that, first and foremost, indyref2 will be a political endeavour.

Indyref2 will be fought and won on the ground by committed activists who will firstly have to “re-harvest” the “almost” majority for Scottish statehood that emerged in indyref1 and, secondly, win over other 10-15% who already would like to see an independent Scotland but need to be economically reassured. There is a third group who are wobbling due to Brexit and a Unionist fourth group.

We can never forget some uncomfortable truths about the initial strategy of indyref1.

We all recall the flatlining first year of indyref1 where polling for independence often dipped. That, and the elite messaging that went over people’s heads, should be burned into our memory.

The first line of defence of Better Together 2 and the mainstream media will be a twisted take on the Growth Commission report – particularly if, crucially, it is unamended by Amendment B.

This time the No campaign won’t claim that Scotland is too small and to stupid to develop the institutions to have its own currency. If the Growth Commission report is adopted unamended it will be much, much worse than that.

The No campaign will claim that it is the SNP, I repeat the SNP, who assert that Scotland is too small and too stupid to achieve what the even smaller Czechs and Slovaks managed to do when they won their independence.

Like the Nato debate of a few years ago, this is the wrong debate. Like the Nato debate it will move us not one step forward or one step back in the cause for independence.

Of course we probably eventually join Nato, but only when the four Vanguard boats sail down the Clyde for the last time. The assumption of Nato membership, and the actual timing of the adoption of a Scottish currency, will like everything else in this endeavour to regain statehood be a matter of timing; that’s how matters of political economy work.

As the front page, page two, page three and even a bit of page four of Saturday’s National illustrates, the leadership appears concerned, no doubt remembering that by turning the Nato debate into a quasi vote of confidence Alex won by a whisker; a mere 15 votes.

However, there are differences with the Nato debate too. The Growth Commission debate is much more existential, indeed, too existential to even considering leaving to the SNP.

As a Scottish political activist who is wedded to some basic tenets of social democracy, Keynesian economics and modern 21st-century Scottish nationalism there are aspects of the overly huge Growth Commission motion that require some amendment.

Moreover there is not a cat’s chance in hell of me and thousands like me shedding our social democratic, Kensyian and Scottish nationalist skin, or for that matter membership card of the Scottish National Party, for the duration of the indyref2 campaign.

For some in the SNP a European – as opposed to North American – version of social democracy and Kensyian economics were , it appears, no more than electoral tropes to bash Blairism, rather than core philosophical beliefs.
This I pointed out to Andrew Wilson, in conversation with him two years ago, so none of this should be a surprise to him.

That there was no serious representation on the Growth Commission from Scottish institutions that have social democratic, Keynesian values embedded in how they do their business has consequences.

The fact that there was no representation from the broader Scottish trade union movement – and I do not mean me, as there are many better qualified – was a severe oversight. The Scottish trade union movement encompasses the social democratic centre ground of 21st-century Scotland, incorporating a mature, developed, academically peer reviewed position on the political economy.The deliberate exclusion of this group paradoxically represents a pivot away from the world’s most successful proponents of the modern welfare state of Northern Europe.

This is not to say that the Growth Commission is a full-blown manifesto for neo-liberalism; it is not. Rather it’s a much more softer-edged project, more akin to Hillary Clinton’s centrism which was once the toast of all and, having failed, now eloquently discredited by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Bill Ramsay
Glasgow