There are not many things that Scotland’s warring partisans like to be seen agreeing on.

Three years after *that* big vote, our public life still seems dominated by just one all-pervasive dividing line.

Yet nudge a smarter campaigner, unionist or nationalist, and he or she will whisper a rare consensus view: Scotland has too much politics but too little policy.

Two decades after the Devolution referendum - and three years after the “indyref” - Scotland still lacks the kind of nuts-and-bolts policy-testing and policy-creating machinery found in countries - or even autonomous regions - of our size.

Why are neighbouring countries in the Nordic world doing quite so well? Because they come up and deliver good ideas on everything from bike lanes to child care, from tax to regional development. They make mistakes. So do German lander, for that matter. But they have a cadre of think-tankers, publicly and privately funded, partisan and non-partisan whose job it is to minimise those. Those people need paid.

Lord Andrew Dunlop, the civil servant turned Tory peer, summed up the Scottish situation. “For some time now it has been clear that the funding available for policy research and analysis north of the border is woefully inadequate.” That is blunt ,but plenty of people in Scottish public life will agree.

Lord Dunlop was speaking as a new private body was set up to finance non-partisan policy development on research.

The new Scottish Policy Foundation (SPF) has, it is understood, hundreds of thousands to spend in its first year. That may not sound like a lot, especially compared with the country’s university sector and civil service. We have plenty of smart people, after all, our unis are full of them. How do we get more of them putting their minds to knotty policy issues. Even seed funding can help. Some £30,000-£50,000 buys a lot of policy research.

But there are voices, including those close to the current Government in Edinburgh, who are wondering whether Scotland needs more than just an independent private funder.

We spend millions on our politics. Just a fraction on that goes on making our politics smarter, such as the Scottish Parliament Information Centre, better known as SPICe.

Right now taxpayers pay political parties to staff local offices to deal with constituents’ grumbles. Is this the best way to handle the niggles of everyday life. Is your MP or MSP the best person to take up an immigration case or a row over a hedge? Probably not always.

What if parties instead got public cash to develop credible policy? Or do we want politicians who spout glib one-liners or some muddled brief they have just been given by a party flack?

Devolution - and possible independence - was always pitched as a way of finding better ways of doing things, of working out Scottish solutions to Scottish problems.

That takes to time and money. And it will not be political sexy. We have an untapped reserve of potential wisdom. But are our leaders smart enough to put policy back in to our politics?

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