Politics is politics and petty point-scoring is lamentably inevitable in the Scottish goldfish bowl.

The political landscape is littered with so many vacuous diatribes which detract from rather than enable a meaningful discussion about the substance of things.

In this vein and from the perspective of wishing to see Scotland’s economy thrive, surely there was no other way to greet comments this week from Scottish Conservatives finance spokesman Craig Hoy about losses sustained by the Scottish National Investment Bank (SNIB) on investments than with a weary sigh.

Yes, it would be lovely if the taxpayer-backed SNIB could engage in the large-scale investment activity it was set up to undertake and sustain no losses on the funding it advances to companies it backs.

However, this is by its very nature a risk business, and losses will be sustained.

There is always plenty of clamour for the Scottish Government to play its part in boosting business and the economy north of the Border. Sometimes this clamour is constructive and at other times it is just carping from the sidelines by political opponents.

SNIB is a key element of the Scottish Government’s efforts on the economy. The Scottish Government has committed £2 billion of capital funding to the investment bank, which was launched in November 2020, over the first 10 years of operation.

People really have to make up their minds about whether they want the Scottish Government to engage in such large-scale investment to boost economic activity or not.

If they do, and surely they should, they need to accept there will be losses, sometimes large ones, along the way.

Publishing its annual report and accounts this week, SNIB said its results “demonstrate continued growth of the development bank while reflecting a challenging environment for early-stage businesses”.

The latter part of this analysis presumably alludes to the losses sustained.

SNIB recorded a net loss of £138 million for the year to March, reflecting £65m of realised losses from the failure of three early investments and £85m of unrealised losses arising from investment-value writedowns as well as anticipated losses relating to two further portfolio companies whose administration processes had not been completed by March 31.

The realised losses relate to the bank’s investments in three companies which ultimately failed: M Squared Lasers, Krucial and Trojan Energy.

SNIB noted the administration processes for Orbex and Pneumowave would be completed in the year to March 2027, so these losses were recorded as........

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