Opinion: We must be prepared to take some risks over ADL

There is no shortage of orders for buses as old diesel-powered vehicles are replaced by new electric ones.

The question is who will build them, and where?

The announcement came as a bolt from the blue. One union representative told me that they had been “blindsided”; another said that they were “flabbergasted” not least because it turns out Scotland’s First Minister and his deputy had been in secret talks with the company’s Canadian owner NFI for weeks.

And this raises some broader questions.

Why is there no plan to manage demand, co-ordinate public procurement and align it with the supply base? Why is the future of such a strategic national manufacturing asset subject to decisions taken in faraway and unaccountable board rooms?

That is precisely what is also happening just a few miles away at Scotland’s last oil refinery in Grangemouth.

Joint owners tax exile Jim Ratcliffe and the Chinese state, have embarked on a ruthless close and import strategy, with a catastrophic loss of jobs.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the balance of power as well as wealth in the economy when the livelihoods of generations of workers and the prosperity of communities can be switched on and off with no accountability.

There is an alternative, based on an industrial strategy with a renewal of democratic, strategic economic planning.

If we do not break from the existing neo-liberal economic model: promote public, co-operative and municipal ownership, our economy will continue to be, in effect, colonised by multinational corporations, global capital and financial markets.

We must be prepared to take some risks, to learn from international, as well as historical experience.

Alexander Dennis and the Grangemouth oil refinery have been in public ownership before.

That must remain an option now, but public ownership should not be reduced to a tool of reactive crisis management alone. It must be a proactive option too.