There is a school of Scottish thought that every piece of bad news must involve a “betrayal”. No industry, it seems, expires from natural causes rather than because sinister forces have been working against it.

No business owners make commercial decisions on the basis of hard facts and figures, rather than from some vindictive desire to do down Scotland. Politicians (depending on label) who fail to stop them are cast as part of the conspiracy.

It is a dead-end mentality which serves as a substitute for actually doing anything. In the case of Grangemouth, the narrative took a while to develop but is now being cobbled together to blame the Labour government for actions and inactions that long predated its July election.

John Swinney who hitherto had little to say about Grangemouth now voices “frustration” that other people are not doing enough. Only the wilfully gullible will be impressed. Mr Swinney has known about Grangemouth’s challenges for years and did nothing about them.

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If it had been a Scottish Government priority to “save Grangemouth”, as it certainly should have been, every sinew of effort would have been devoted to that outcome for years past. Once the closure announcement was made, everything which followed was a rearguard action with diminishing prospects of success in the absence of any clear alternative.

Why was the threat to Grangemouth ignored for so long? I don’t suppose the Scottish Government saw saving an oil refinery as particularly compatible with its steady flow of negativity........

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