THE Scottish Government has at last put economic growth at, or at least near, the top of its political agenda. In her speech at Holyrood on Tuesday setting out the legislative programme for the coming year, Nicola Sturgeon spent several minutes extolling the concept of economic growth in a way no other first minister has done since we achieved devolution in 1999. I hope it will turn out to have been a historic moment.

The mistakes of Scottish governments, Labour and SNP, are one reason (though not the only reason) why our record of economic growth has been so lousy, in a period when other small countries have been zipping ahead. After the SNP took over at Holyrood in 2007, it announced plans to encourage the economic growth that had been embarrassingly absent before.

The initial aim was for Scotland to match the growth rate of the UK by 2010, and of small, independent European countries by 2017. The reason for making this distinction is that UK growth is, by international standards, feeble anyway, and a Scotland aiming only to equal that would be showing a pitiful lack of ambition. The European comparison ought to have given a much better idea of what we might achieve in the longer term.

Looking back a decade on these figures now, it is hard to suppress either a groan or a burst of hollow laughter.

Not only have we utterly failed to match up to the performance of those European partners we yearn to equal, we have even failed to keep pace with the decrepit and declining UK. Its growth rate is falling again as it seeks to head off post-Brexit blues. But Scotland’s growth rate is falling even faster, mainly because of the collapse in the oil price, and recession is clearly on the cards north of the Border. So the

Scottish Government has missed its targets by a mile.

The situation is all the more serious for not being merely an economic one.

It is caught up with the whole political future of our country, in particular the clearly expressed will of a great majority of the people that this future should be European, not just British. It seems to me that the best way to secure that future should be through national independence, though

I am well aware that the majority does not yet agree.

A basic requirement is therefore that the 45 per cent who voted Yes in 2014 should somehow bring about a change of mind strong enough to make a difference to the 55 per cent who voted No. There are all sorts of reasons why people might switch their votes next time, and you can read about the reasons every day in The National. But the most telling argument of all would be to show them how an independent Scotland could make them better off.

Without that, there cannot be much prospect of winning a second referendum. It is not going too far to say the cause of independence depends on the growth rate.

I rejoice that Nicola Sturgeon has now, in effect, accepted this argument. Her speech rested on the unspoken admission that the previous policy on growth had been inadequate, and that for the transformed conditions of 2016 we urgently need a new one. Last week, she announced the appointment of a growth commission under ex-MSP and economist Andrew Wilson to put flesh on the bones of the basic idea. This week, she helped to flesh it out herself, by announcing a £500 million business fund. It would be good to keep up this pace, because there is not a lot of time to lose.

The £500m business fund marks an important change of attitude. It shows the Scottish Government responding to what entrepreneurs say they want themselves, rather than forever trying to impose on them standards of sustainability, inclusiveness and so on, which, while socially desirable, do not make it any easier to turn a buck in hard times. The standards are seldom a problem for the big companies in services or even manufacturing, let alone the public agencies that join in the chorus of political correctness, all aiming to curry favour with politicians.

They form the bloated Scottish economic establishment, and for decades they are the ones government has lent an ear to.

But they are a world away from the realities of the Scottish economy as embodied in the small and medium-sized enterprises making up 99 per cent of its corporate sector. These are not bloated plutocrats and blood-sucking capitalists. They are wee guys and gals who set up in business suited to their talents because that is what they want to do; they prefer working for themselves rather than for anybody else, and good luck to them. They are not an optional extra for the Scottish economy, but the real core of it. It is from them that the future growth will come, just as the growth of the past came from them. They are the Jim McColls and the Tom Hunters of tomorrow.

Indispensable as those wee guys and gals are, not every single one of them succeeds. On the contrary, a good many fail. In the life-cycle of their enterprises a tricky period always comes in the first year or so after they have made their initial investment but before the return on it begins to flow. It is the time of greatest danger in any start-up, rendered all the riskier because we no longer trust our banks. The £500m business fund has the purpose of covering this hazardous gap: A small company involved in investment or exports will be able to get a loan of £5m.

That is fine as a stop-gap, leaving Andrew Wilson’s growth commission the time and scope to take a longer look at the defects in a Scottish economy drilled to be a subordinate and dependent part of the UK economy, rather than to rely on its own people and resources.

Last week, I wrote about how the Scottish Government should make a start by cutting taxes, and, for example, seek the power to set its own corporation tax, as in Northern Ireland. The burden of the planning system, geared to the needs of 1946 when it was set up, is something else needing an urgent review.

But I would give this warning: Economic growth does not in itself create social equality.

In fact it can’t do that. Growth never takes place in the abstract. It is driven by companies or individuals being so successful at what they do that they earn profits, employ people and make investments. By the same token they leave behind other companies or individuals not so successful. If we cannot accept that fact and its consequences, we will not get any growth.

It is a mistake to interpret this as “a race to the bottom”. A wealthy nation, a growing Scotland, will be far more able to look after all its citizens than a nation stuck in egalitarian stagnation.

It is a pity the Scottish Government, its civil service and the SNP at large all find this basic reality so hard to swallow. But, as I say, now a change of mind has set in and we can hope for better things.