Holyrood does appear to have an economy problem

If it feels that every day brings news of another Scottish business collapsing into administration, there is a reason for it. This week, data was released which shows that there has been a 50 per cent rise in the number of Scottish companies in financial distress, increasing from 2,190 to 3,313.

Today, Glasgow-founded fashion retailer Quiz has gone into administration. Yesterday, a major Scottish food retailer collapsed, and a significant financial services company had its Board ousted by a hostile move by a New York-based hedge fund. The day before that, a lorry manufacturing company failed, and earlier in the week, a Scottish furniture manufacturing business went bust.

The list of failures goes back well beyond that, and the list of Scottish businesses being bought up by overseas competitors is lengthy as well. Common Weal continually points out that Scotland has very few substantial international businesses, almost none outside the financial services sector and certainly almost no substantial internationally-trading manufacturing companies.

And yet this subject – the health and well-being of the Scottish-owned economy – has been almost absent from the election campaign. There has been some debate about the future of hospitality businesses, and many on the financial duress list will be in the hospitality sector. But other than that, there is very little differentiation in rhetoric between 'economy' and 'economy owned in Scotland'.

Indeed, the SNP is almost certain to return as Scotland's government, and it has almost nothing to say on the subject. The 'Prosperous Scotland' section of the manifesto (which covers all of its economic policies) has almost nothing new in it other than doubling down on existing practices.

By far the highest profile move on the economy in SNP plans is the Scotland Major Projects Office, which mainly appears to be a rebranding of various existing initiatives to try and make it as easy as possible for overseas investors to buy Scottish assets. This is the opposite of addressing the loss of Scottish companies; it is actually likely to accelerate it.

The rest of it falls into one of two categories – already doing it (agriculture support, tech scalars, broadband, a 'First Minister Start-Up Challenge') or sounds identical to the UK Government position (digital economy, AI, GDP Growth, inward investment, make planning easier for big developers).

The relevant section in the manifesto relating to the Scottish-owned economy amounts to 48 words in a manifesto which is nearly 25,000 words long. All it commits to is to take forward the pre-announced plans in the recent Community Wealth Building legislation. Those are welcome but very limited and will depend on how sincere the government is in driving them forward.

Certainly, the relevant section makes substantial claims about retaining more of Scotland's wealth in Scotland, but it does not contain any policies which might be likely to result in that outcome. These barely reach the level of aspirations and are not even prominent in the overall economic case.

Labour appears mainly to wish to sustain consistency with the UK so a lot on AI and, for no obvious reason other than their closeness to the nuclear industry, nuclear power.

The Scottish Greens do at least have some proper proposals to transition the oil and gas workforce, but otherwise their economic agenda is surprisingly sparse and focused on issues that Common Weal would strongly support (like circular economy practices), but don't actually appear to have much economic impact and are too vague anyway.

The key thing missing from all of the manifestos and from the entire election debate has been the words 'industrial strategy'. (The Greens do have an 'industrial mission', but again it is more to do with greening the economy than developing a Scottish-owned economy.) Scotland's parties are still trying to tweak a small number of levers and hoping that, remote control-style, this will lead to something positive happening in the economy.

Of course, this is what Scotland has been doing for 20 years and more, and it hasn't worked. What is missing is any sense that anyone has any new thinking, any sense of what change looks like or how it would be delivered. It is becoming fair to say that Holyrood has an economic problem.

Common Weal has, of course, set out full details of the kind of industrial strategy Scotland should pursue – you can read a summary of it here or find it in Sorted. But at the moment, this kind of thinking on a more interventionist public approach, which recognises severe distress in much of the Scottish economy, is very far removed from the political debate that is taking place, such as it is.