LAST week in The National, I made a plea for the SNP to show boldness and radicalism. To be honest, I wasn’t holding my breath.

But credit where it’s due. The SNP conference unanimously supported the principle of a land value tax, and it voted overwhelmingly to stop public funding for the monarchy.

The First Minister confirmed the leftward march of the party with a few well-timed policy announcements. Free sanitary protection in schools, colleges and universities by August is a welcome step towards universal provision. As is the headline-grabbing idea of a publicly owned, not-for-profit energy company that will reduce bills for household consumers.

Yes, UK Labour have also called for something similar. But it’s one thing for a party in opposition to promise the sun, the moon and the stars. More significant is that this is initiative is coming from a government with the power to deliver.

The announcement was immediately attacked by one of the Big Six energy companies, SSE, which although based in Perth has most of its customer base in the south of England. The policy “risks distorting the market”, claimed the company — a richly hypocritical statement coming from a company that just a few years ago was fined £10.5 million by Ofgem for ripping off its customers by providing misleading information.

The truth is the market is effectively rigged by the energy giants. Every autumn, it seems, one of the companies announces a major hike in energy prices – and one by one, the other five duly follow suit.

The condemnation of this policy by energy firm chiefs is a sure sign that it will be a great step forward for consumers. Also important for me is the message that it sends about the priorities and values of a future independent Scotland.

For 40 years, UK governments have worshipped before the altar of private profit. From the 1970s onwards, more than 100 public enterprises were sold off to private profiteers for bargain-basement prices. That’s three times more than the total privatisation programmes of France, Germany, Spain and Italy combined.

This drive to sell off public assets was underpinned by a right-wing, free-market ideology based on the belief that big business alone was capable of driving forward progress, and should be left to get on with maximising profits free from regulation. The idea went unchallenged for a long time, but no longer.

The development of renewable energy in Scotland is an illuminating case study of the difference between public planning for the common good and private production for the benefit of shareholders. The first great wave of renewable energy production in Scotland came with the creation of the publicly owned North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board. From the start, the scheme was entirely driven for the benefit of local communities, especially in the Highlands and Islands, who were without electricity. The act establishing the Hydro Board included a clause stating that any profits generated were to be “used for the economic and social improvement of the North of Scotland”.

Glens were flooded, new reservoirs created and some settlements submerged. And in the early days, perhaps understandably, there was huge opposition from local communities because of the threatened impact on the landscapes, waterways and even homes.

But as the project proceeded and the public benefits became clearer, public opposition began to dissipate, aided by an increasingly sensitive approach to landscape and biodiversity. A proposal for a hydro scheme in Glen Nevis was rejected on the grounds that it would have had a detrimental impact on an area of spectacular natural beauty, and, as the programme proceeded, more time, effort and investment went in to ensuring that, as far as possible, the new power stations and dams should blend in with the surrounding environment

In contrast, the privately owned energy companies that oversee the production of wind energy began with a lot of public goodwill. The idea of clean, green energy in the age of climate chaos was initially popular across the board. But the new industry provided little benefit to rural communities, other than some temporary construction work for outside labour.

It was driven from the start by commercial interests, including big corporations, landowners and a lucrative network of consultants and facilitators. And over time, the impact on landscape and ecosystems has increased rather than diminished, as energy companies seek to maximise profits by erecting ever-taller turbines spread over vast areas of upland, along with associated roads, tracks and transmission infrastructure.

And in contrast to the growth in support for the post-war expansion of hydro-power, public concern over the proliferation of large wind farms has grown rather than diminished.

As things stand, energy generation remains reserved to Westminster. The Scottish Government has, over the past few years, more proactively used its control over planning to safeguard important landscapes by refusing a number of large-scale developments. But how much better if Scotland could, post-independence, move towards public, community and municipal power generation?

That’s now the clear the direction of travel for Germany. A few years ago, the population of Hamburg voted by a resounding majority in a referendum to bring the city’s power grid back into public ownership. Across the country privatisation is on the retreat, with 80 per cent of distribution networks now owned and managed by regional and local councils.

Scotland, as we know, has phenomenal potential for renewable energy. That doesn’t mean we need to cover every bit of available landscape with wind turbines.

With a marine area seven times larger than our total land area, we have immense potential for offshore renewables. The technology is still at a pioneering stage, and the Big Six energy companies are reluctant to invest in a new sphere that doesn’t produce short-term dividends for shareholders.

It does, however, open up possibilities for a public renewables company that would seek to get in on the ground floor and become the main player in what may become the next big renewables revolution.

That would prepare the way for a cutting-edge public enterprise, in the same way that, in a different era, the Norwegian Government established a state-owned oil company in the early days of North Sea exploration.

Nicola Sturgeon’s pledge to set up a publicly owned energy retail company has gone a long away to reassure some of the more critical Yes supporters that the Scottish Government is not drifting towards the soggy, centrist middle ground

Without independence, our scope is always going to be limited. But alongside practical policies that will yield short-term benefits for hundreds of thousands of low-income families, we also need a radical long-term vision that will inspire young people to take to the streets and campaign hard for independence.