WITHOUT a good deal more vigorous work on its behalf, I fear there is a danger of the excellent report from Andrew Wilson’s Growth Commission sinking without trace. In my view this also means Scotland will never become an independent nation, because the report contains the only plausible scenario for that happening.

Andrew obviously slogged long and hard on the task handed him by the Scottish Government in September 2016, and the 354 pages he wrote are the length of quite a large novel – what is more, it was produced in less time than it would take most professional novelists. Since he completed this hard graft, and did the normal round of interviews the first weekend after publication, he has fallen a bit silent. It is easy to understand why he might feel he needs a rest. But that means there is nobody going out and evangelising in favour of the report in the way that is likely to be necessary. The price of this omission may be high.

It is true Nicola Sturgeon has welcomed the fruit of these labours, if in a tone that fell somewhat short of enthusiasm, but no member of her Cabinet has stuck his or her neck further out. The trouble is that none of those politicians (except one, and he is bogged down in his education portfolio) has even the most distant acquaintance with economics. To them, it all amounts to a big pork barrel, good only for hand-outs to various client groups of voters. Andrew Wilson has always been blamelessly uninterested in the seamy side of Scottish politics.

There was approval for the report on the right wing of the SNP – not that it counts for much – and from the business community there arose a welcome of a sort seldom heard for anything the ruling party thinks or does. But, otherwise, the loudest applause came from professional commentators south of the Border, in finance or in academia, who normally take little notice of Scotland but who found in the 354 pages an honest, refreshing, impartial survey of an economy that seldom benefits from dispassionate comment, and plausible answers to the questions it raises.

There was disapproval for the report on the left wing of the SNP, of which former MP George Kerevan made himself the spokesman at the party conference in Aberdeen. But the criticism was thin, largely confined to calls for the devaluation of a Scottish currency which does not yet exist.

It seems clear the left in this country has become so intellectually hollow and feeble that it would be incapable of producing 354 pages of economic survey and commentary for itself, so that we have little idea what socialism could actually look like in the Scotland of the 21st century. Or at least, calls for more extensive definition, even in newspaper columns, have fallen on deaf ears. The Growth Commission has trumped all the Scottish socialists put together.

Unionists, meanwhile, gave the usual chorus of yah boos. It might have been thought even the most cursory glance through the report would have persuaded anybody it was a serious piece of work based on solid research, some of the results never presented to the public before. But we are clearly past the point where a rational response can be expected from a certain part of the political spectrum. Rather than trying to argue, it is as well just to walk out.

I want to take issue with the sole coherent criticism of the report, that it is somehow a further exercise in austerity. The use of that term is meant to imply a continuation of the UK policy followed since 2010, when the new Tory Government found itself faced with a horrendous deficit left by Labour. Then chancellor George Osborne set out to squeeze the deficit at all costs, including the cost to living standards (except for bankers). Living standards have certainly been kept down, but only half the deficit has been cut. Osborne’s successor, Philip Hammond, has therefore decided to live with the deficit until some better plan occurs to him, and conveniently shifted the deadline for doing so back to 2025 – otherwise known as the Twelfth of Never.

This does not bear much resemblance to what Andrew Wilson has in mind. The problem he deals with is in essence one of transition, of how to get Scotland from a state of dependence, where most of the public money spent here comes from London, to one of independence, where we have to fend for ourselves, and, from the outset, finance part of our needs in the international money markets. What these markets will want is a convincing plan for reduction of the deficit inherited from the UK.

Andrew proposes that any further increases in Scottish public spending should be kept below the general rate of growth in the economy, till the deficit is cut to 3% of gross domestic product. This reduction will also be a condition for Scotland’s re-entry to the EU in due course.

Without doubt, there would be some difficulties of adjustment to overcome, but that must be true of any effort to win independence. We cannot expect an absolutely smooth transition with no wrinkles of any kind. The focus has to be not on these passing problems but on the rewards to be won from the ability to set our own economic course.

In recent times, Westminster has given us policies that run directly counter to Scottish interests, such as hostility to immigrants and asset bubbles. Instead of wasting energy to deal with the resulting damage, we will be able to do what suits us rather than what suits racists and speculators in the south-east of England.

In fact, pretty well everything will change from the moment of independence. This makes a mockery of Unionist claims about the perils for Scotland in setting at risk a steady state which at least keeps the whole place going, if at a sluggish place. At the point Ireland became independent, 97 per cent of its trade was with the UK. Today the figure is 18 per cent, because the Irish economy has vigorously diversified.

When Estonia became independent, its chief economic function was as the supplier of refrigerators to the rest of the Soviet bloc. Today, it is the champion of free markets for the whole of eastern Europe.

It may not feel like it sometimes, but we should not doubt the capacity of Scotland for equally radical change. In fact, our economy changes all the time anyway. The Scotland of 2018 is different from the Scotland of 2008, a big producer of North Sea oil, which was itself different from the Scotland of 1998, in the middle of the dotcom revolution, and that was in turn different from the Scotland of 1988, still hoping to save Ravenscraig.

The Scotland of 2028 will be different again, and in a state impossible to extrapolate from how things are now. Unionism cannot halt this process, but independence will make the conditions for it more favourable because we will be following our own economic policies rather than somebody else’s.

This is the prize we can set before the Scottish people now that the Growth Commission has given us chapter and verse for it. It’s a pity that the response of the Scottish Government has up to now been so sluggish, presumably because it consists of people with a greater collective interest in baby boxes than in economic growth.

At least, after ignoring the subject for several years, they seem to have come to the conclusion that growth might be quite a good thing after all. But deeds have yet to match thoughts or words, and the time to formulate effective action is growing rather short.