Across the political spectrum, the overwhelming reaction to this week’s Gherkin Budget was “meh”, and at a time dominated by AI-driven doom and gloom, we could all do with a bit of inspiration and excitement.

Honest John Swinney is fumbling with the wet Scottish bluebells when it comes to setting the heather alight, and no matter how often Westminster Labour politicians repeat Andy Burnham’s mantra of “growth in every postcode”, it’s hard to see how it will be delivered from a Budget whose theme was giving the country “breathing space”.

Giving breathing space suggests suffocation, and, at the risk of tactlessness, the best thing that could be done to get those postcodes sprouting would be for politicians at all levels to get their knees off the neck of investors and developers.

With Scottish politics at all levels dominated by a hardening left with an in-built distrust of business and an instinct to interfere, the investment landscape is challenging, even in Edinburgh, despite, or because of, its advantages.

Two close observers of the economic landscape in Edinburgh I spoke to this week despaired at the prioritisation of poverty, homelessness and climate change above the economic growth needed to provide the solutions. It might seem heartless, but not if laudable goals are being hampered by well-intentioned meddling and an unwillingness to accept the difference between destitution, which is almost always linked to addiction, and the impossibility of trying to end relative poverty.

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