There has been much to ponder in the last month, which has featured high-profile business and economic stories with major political dimensions at home and abroad. Starting in Scotland, the Ferguson Marine shipyard at Port Glasgow has once again been in the spotlight. There is no doubting the importance of this yard, which provides hundreds of valuable jobs to the Inverclyde economy.

However, this is often overlooked by critics of the Scottish Government’s ownership of the yard, and some people have shown a voracious appetite to make political capital over major cost overruns and delays in the building of the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa ferries for CalMac. The contract to build these two ferries was awarded by the Scottish Government’s Caledonian Maritime Assets Limited (CMAL) to Ferguson Marine in 2015.

On March 17, CMAL announced it was awarding a contract to build seven small, fully electric ferries for CalMac, which is also owned by the Scottish Government, to Remontowa Shipbuilding of Poland. Ferguson Marine had made it through to the final stages of the tender process, which saw five bids submitted, but it was sadly not to be for the Port Glasgow yard.

CMAL last July said estimated costs for phase one of the small vessels replacement programme were around £175 million for the seven new ferries as well as port improvements and shore power upgrades.

Bids were “robustly assessed against technical and financial criteria, with a 65%/35% weighting, respectively”, CMAL noted on March 17.

It did not take long, in the wake of news of the award to Remontowa, for the politicking around Ferguson Marine to kick off. Conservative MSP Sue Webber declared: “This announcement is devastating for Ferguson Marine and could yet prove the death knell for the yard.”

She added: “It should be a given that a nationalised shipyard wins a Scottish Government contract yet it’s a measure of how badly the SNP have mismanaged Ferguson’s that ferries which should be built on the west coast of Scotland are instead to be made in Eastern Europe. The blame for this outrageous situation lies squarely with incompetent SNP ministers who have let down workers at the yard, and ferry passengers across........

© Herald Scotland