THE Scottish Government’s Budget to be presented at Holyrood today seems intended to do two things.

I would guess that in present conditions this is one too many, and that as a result it will do neither thing well. A historic moment, when Scotland shoulders wider fiscal powers than ever before, may therefore turn out to be a damp squib – which itself could have future undesirable consequences.

In the long-term, the Government’s main aim is to make our land a more equal nation. In a column last month I tried to get to grips with this idea and I did not find it a satisfactory one. The most important, though not the only, measure that we have of equality is income. The SNP has been in power for nearly 10 years now. While during that time there have been variations in the inequality of incomes, the net change has been nil. At present, in fact, an earlier, slightly equalising trend has gone into reverse, and Scottish incomes are again becoming more unequal.

There are measures of equality other than income, but they show no marked deviation from this norm. Whatever may be the key to greater equality of incomes, the Scottish Government has not been able to find it. I doubt if today’s Budget is going to make any difference to that state of affairs.

In the short-term, the Scottish Government needs to deal with the slowdown in the economy that arises from Brexit, from the slump of 2015 in the North Sea oil industry and from the failure of the UK Government to conquer its deficit and so create scope for more decisive expansionary measures.

Earlier this year I had thought Scotland might by now be in actual recession, but at least that has been avoided. Even so, our economy is in quite poor shape. The annual growth rate is down to 0.4 per cent, compared to 0.9 per cent for the UK as a whole, and is way below the level needed to prevent a rise in unemployment in 2017. Finance Secretary Derek Mackay has acknowledged this “growth gap” is the main problem he faces. Yet it is far from clear what he will actually be able to do about it today.

The problem may lie closer to home, for a possibility nobody in the Government has cared to broach is that there may in fact be a contradiction between the long-term aims and the short-term requirements. The results of Brexit remain unpredictable but the UK Government’s general economic measures could start us once more on a slow road to recovery in 2017 (yet again – these things never seem to last).

One fact so far largely unnoticed is a recovery in the North Sea. At this moment, the European free market price of Brent crude oil is approaching double its level of a year ago, and the upward trend does not appear to be exhausted. In political terms this only goes to show that no reliance at all should ever be placed on commodity prices: future organisers of a Yes campaign, please take note. In economic terms, it could give Mackay just a tiny wee bit of wriggle room he could never have hoped for when he accepted his ministerial bed of nails last summer.

But again, his passage through this small window of opportunity may be impeded by the fact that the Government has done little hard thinking about how to reach the state of equality it desires, or about what that state may look like in real terms. It is easy enough just to chant the mantra of equality, but the main practical recourse is an old one, this time to be followed with no great conviction. The Scottish Government wants to tax the rich, though not harshly. It is constrained by the fact that our highest earners, who pay 45p in the pound on their income, account for less than one per cent of working Scots, yet provide 14 per cent of the revenue. They must not be frightened away, or else the percentage of revenue they provide will be zero.

The proceeds of a tax hike are bound to remain modest, then, as will the redistribution that follows. The Government has said it wants to spend what extra money it can find on education for the poorest pupils. That sounds commendable but, even if the spending is turned on immediately, the economic pay-off will only appear a dozen years or more down the line, when its beneficiaries leave school and bring to the workforce any superior skills they have acquired. Meanwhile the higher taxes remain in force.

It’s a funny thing that, because I have, up to now, assumed Derek Mackay, along with Nicola Sturgeon and the rest of the Scottish Government, are all Keynesians of the old school and the first water. In other words, they believe it is a function of government to correct the cycles naturally occurring in a capitalist economy. When the economy booms, they sit back, collect the revenues and pay down their debts. When the economy slumps, they spend money to stimulate activity and get things moving again. The easiest mechanism through which to work these effects is taxation. So, in good times raise taxes, in bad times cut them.

Yet here we have Scotland teetering on the brink of recession, and our government wants to raise taxes. By any standards, including its own Keynesian ones, this is bizarre, precisely the wrong thing to do. While it will take some spending power out of the economy, educational investment will not at once restore it. The top one per cent of earners might, after all, have been spending this portion of their income on their ghillies and footmen, on glittering jewellery for their wives and frivolous gadgets for their children, all providing income and employment for others at the same time. Instead the resources will be locked up in an optimistic investment from which the profit is bound to be slow and uncertain.

That is why I say there is a contradiction between the long-term aims of the Scottish Government and the short-term requirements of the economic situation it faces right now. It is, of course, nothing new for a government to be confronted by such a contradiction, torn between finding enough money for vital public services and not overburdening the motors within the economy that produce all our income and wealth. But this is something new for our government in Scotland, which has never yet had the range of powers that would allow it to contemplate, let alone make, such a choice. Perhaps we will be able to judge from its dilemma its true character. I suspect what we will see above all is caution.

In the greater scheme of things that will not be good enough. The Scottish Government, along with me and the readers of this newspaper, all have a yet higher goal: the independence of our country. In my view this can only happen once we convince its people that the future standard of living will be at least as good as any they might enjoy by staying inside the UK. A majority is never going to vote for a lower standard of living, and the cause of independence will recede into the indefinite future.

A higher standard of living is not going to be reached by just talking about it, however. We need to take hard-headed, uncomfortable decisions about how to bring it about in a world of difficult realities, not in some never-never land. To cope with them, we will often need to postpone the achievement of other desirable ideals.

Does the Scottish Government know this? I’m not sure, but let’s wait and see what happens today.