Amid rumours that the Scottish Government will abandon the private funding mechanism to dual the A9, Andy Maciver argues that the road will never be built without private finance, and calls for a road building renaissance funded by investors.

“Nationalise the entire economy. Nationalise utilities, nationalise energy, nationalise transport, nationalise communications, including the internet”. This idea, espoused by Zarah Sultana at the first (and probably last) Your Party conference, was probably not the wackiest on offer last weekend, at a conference where this new party decided that Jeremy Corbyn was too right wing to be its leader. That is not a typo!

However, as political positions go, it is balancing with one leg on the extreme edge of the philosophical spectrum. Growing up in a capitalist democracy affords people at the extreme edges of the political spectrum a protective bubble in which they can blissfully opine about the virtues of the sort of regimes defeated before their 21st century supporters were born.

Most politicians though, especially the ones with ambitions to be in positions of authority, are obliged to live in the real world. The real world is harder. Solutions to problems can’t be explained in three-word-slogans; they require grown-up politicians to remember that voters are also grown-ups and, in the main, have the capacity to understand real-world solutions to real-world problems.

We have a real-world problem in Scotland, which we all experience every day. Our trunk road infrastructure is extremely poor. We might not think much about it until we travel anywhere else in Europe, at which point we realise just how........

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