Brian Monteith: Sturgeon's economic strategy is more like a PR strategy

I really do wonder at times if our First Minister thinks we, the Scottish public, are mugs? She tells us she will make education her top priority and then presides over its further demise whilst ignoring copious offers of help. Using hyped-up grievances too few shared or enough cared about, she marches the country up the hill to fight in a second independence referendum, only to march us down again when reality dawns it will end in her ignominious defeat.

I could go on listing the false dawns she has talked up and the calamities of her own making she has talked down, but it would take up too many words and I don’t want to depress you. She has, however, gone and done it again. If last week’s speech by the First Minister represented a new economic strategy as she claims, then the future prosperity of Scotland is highly precarious, for it had little to do with economics and everything to do with deflection and reinvention.

The background is simple; the Scottish economy has been performing poorly compared to the rest of the UK. Yes, we escaped a recession when Scottish GDP grew by 0.8 per cent in Q1 of 2017 after it had contracted by 0.2 per cent in Q4 of 2016, but it was by the skin of our teeth and a surprise to most. Given the continued, almost daily, good news about fresh investment, improved manufacturing and growing confidence in the economy following Sterling’s devaluation on the back of the Brexit decision, Scotland was bound to have some economic bounce. If that indeed proves to be what is happening then our anti-Brexit SNP government can hardly take any credit for good figures.

Although difficult to show, there is enough anecdotal evidence and private comment that business leaders are unwilling to admit to explaining how investment in Scotland has been postponed and how companies are preparing, or already have prepared, evacuation plans for some of their operations were Scottish independence to be back on the agenda.

Corroboration for this phenomenon comes from North America where the demise of Montreal to the benefit of Toronto was a direct consequence of years of instability caused by the threat of Quebec breaking away from Canada.

Faced with the hard fact that the SNP has seen its last three electoral outcomes in the local council, Scottish Parliament and Westminster elections diminished in comparison with the immediate past contests, the First Minister knows she has passed Peak SNP, and then some. Education reforms appear to be half-hearted and John Swinney shows little stomach for the necessary fight with Scotland’s education blob, the teachers’ unions and the local authorities. The NHS is creaking at the seams, with A&E closures being fought, staff shortages mounting and clinical targets being routinely missed.

The First Minister needed a plan to show she is starting the new parliamentary term focussed on Scotland being successful rather than doubling down on her grievance culture that has eaten away at her once impervious personal ratings.

What better then, than to launch an economic strategy and to do it in her own back yard? No, not Govan, which despite its brave and enduring citizens is a shaming testimony to all the problems that Scotland faces, but in her native Ayrshire where some free market life is still beating. Oh, how she could deflect from the economic blight her infatuation has brought on Scotland, how she could reinvent herself as the champion of economic progress by associating with the white heat of financial technology and other flavours of the month.

The First Minister thus appeared at a Prestwick aerospace company and announced how the Scottish Government was going to invest in this project and support that initiative and, as a result, Scotland could become a global powerhouse, challenging bigger and better resourced rivals.

We’ve heard it all before with Alex Salmond’s talk of Scotland becoming the Saudi Arabia of renewables and the First minister signing a memorandum of understanding worth £10bn with Chinese investors – only it was all a game. Scotland’s renewables rely on English subsidies and the Chinese deal evaporated to Scotch mist under the searing daylight of journalistic investigation.

What the First Minister announced was not a “bold economic strategy”, but wishful thinking – for the First Minister would do at least as well sticking a pin in the Sporting Life blindfolded than tell us which businesses are most deserving of taxpayer support. This is, after all, the same government that subsidised Amazon in Scotland while punishing local Scottish bookshops through punitive rate revaluations.

Sturgeon’s strategy makes no mention of pulling the many economic leavers at her disposal or considering what regulations are obstacles to economic growth. A true economic strategy would be business friendly for real entrepreneurs working all hours rather than giving platitudes to fellow politicians that have never tasted failure, feared sheriff officers at their door and who, laughing in the face of such adversity, subsequently experience the joy of turning a business round and creating real and lasting jobs.

A real economic strategy would look at cutting business rates for every commercial concern year-on-year; it would appoint a standing parliamentary committee to identify for repeal the most burdensome legislation of the last twenty years; it would look to reduce energy and employment costs that currently price our firms out of markets; it would mean abandoning her Government’s scaremongering grievance-ridden approach to Brexit and instead embrace the business opportunities it presents, especially for our food and drinks industries as well as our international exporters; and it would mean creating a pro-business culture in our educational system so excellence is valued and gratuitous attacks on independent schools (that help companies locate in Scotland) become a thing of the past. In short it would give Scottish commerce a competitive advantage – not try to fly on the back of the latest business fashion.

The only man left in the SNP that understands these issues is Alex Neil: if the First Minister does not give him the prime economic role in her much-needed reshuffle then we can only conclude she is not serious about making Scotland open for business but has simply pulled off another PR exercise that treats us all as mugs.