It’s easy to see where growth, investment and political focus will be over the next five years and it’s the Dreaming Spires growth corridor with Manchester, Leeds and Teeside on the side – not Scotland.

Indeed, after Rachel Reeves’s snub to a near totally absent Scotland in her growth speech yesterday, Labour’s Gordon McKee asked the PM to back a Glasgow AI growth zone in Prime Minister’s Questions. Starmer had a kick at the SNP (forecast to win 43, not nine seats in a General Election re-run today) and mumbled that Scotland “has real potential for AI growth zones”.

Och, isn’t that jist grand.

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Keep chaving awa and one day Scotland will be a grown-up place worthy of big bucks and explicit mentions like OXFORD, CAMBRIDGE and HEATHROW.

Now granted, much of England does need investment since the Tories wasted billions on an HS2 route that would never connect the big cities of northern England let alone Scotland. I’m sure satellite towns round the Oxbridge university hubs are essentially disconnected from them. So, a new railway makes sense. But are England’s elite university towns the only ones with connectivity problems? I’d imagine the rest of overlooked England is beeling.

The whole of Scotland should be too.

Reeves claimed clean energy is the UK’s biggest growth area but made not a single mention of renewables-rich Scotland.

Sure, a few red herrings were thrown.

Reeves had the audacity to suggest a third climate-busting runway at Heathrow would boost Scottish salmon and whisky exports – even though that would also mean NOT exporting direct from Scotland and supporting jobs here.

Indeed, according to travel expert Simon Calder, Heathrow expansion may yet encourage airlines to shift existing direct long-haul flights from Scottish airports to the new all-singing, all-dancing Heathrow.

Planning difficulties and Sadiq Khan’s opposition mean work at Heathrow won’t start in this parliament and “shovel-ready” plans to expand Gatwick and Luton could leave Heathrow forever in the starting blocks.

So, Reeves’s announcement was mostly symbolic – a strong example of Labour’s determination to go “further and faster” – I feel a Buzz Lightyear moment coming on – to infinity and beyond.

But just as voters “misread” Reeves’s doomsterism and felt utterly negative faced with parsimonious cuts to the poorest and warnings of collective belt-tightening, so the silly old public may take a very different message from bigging up Heathrow.

AIR TRAVEL IS OK AGAIN. THE CLIMATE CRISIS IS NOT IMPORTANT. THE GREEN TRANSITION IS KINDA DIFFICULT SO LET’S STAY FOSSIL.

And … DONALD TRUMP IS CALLING THE SHOTS SO LET’S TALK HIS LANGUAGE

Hey – put that electric vehicle on hold and book Miami for the summer holidays. Club class.

Meanwhile, Reeves also announced changes in environmental protection despite the fact we are Europe’s least biodiverse state and cutting red tape locally is actually not Rachel’s dance space. Soon, firms can pay into a nature restoration fund and “stop worrying about bats and newts”. In plain language, mash through whatever habitat you like and gie’s dosh so we can plant trees somewhere else. Nice.

In Reevesspeak, that’s a signal of growth. For everyone else it means:

BATS AND NEWTS CAN GO SWIVEL. PLANNERS ARE ‘BLOCKERS’. LOCAL DEMOCRACY IS AN IRRITATING IRRELEVANCE.

There was also a scary warning shot over welfare – Reeves aims to tackle “soaring” welfare health and disability payments. But how can that happen when so many are waiting for medical procedures and the bedroom tax still operates in England penalising disabled people?

Yet another mixed message was conveyed by the German-based Siemens sign behind the Chancellor as she rattled off a list of growth-busting company names – the majority European, not British. Intended message – we walk with the big boys. Actual message: GROWTH FIRMS “ARRIVE” – THEY ARE NOT HOME GROWN.

Now, Denmark ain’t perfect.

But its biggest firm is Novo Nordisk – the pharmaceutical company behind Ozempic and other weight-loss/diabetes drugs. Yes, it’s controversial. But the firm was set up in 1923 in Denmark by Danes. It stayed and grew there despite/because of a comprehensive welfare state, funded by 50% personal tax rates. Ditto Lego. Ditto Maersk. That’s a very different approach to growth that doesn’t involve throwing the weakest to the wall.

Iceland also ain’t perfect.

But its energy is cheap and green because it’s publicly owned – by local councils, not just the Icelandic state. The final video in my Resilient Iceland YouTube series shows new industries locating beside the Hellisheidi geothermal plant – including a factory growing algae for vitamins currently derived from animals.

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It’s a new local company, beside a locally owned power plant whose prime purpose is delivering cheap, green heating to local people which boosts the whole of Iceland by making this sub-Arctic state liveable.

By contrast, let’s look at a separately announced piece of funding for Scotland, set out by Technology Secretary Peter Kyle – £20 million into the space company at Saxavord on Unst in Shetland. The lack of basic transport infrastructure there makes Unst almost un-liveable and that may scupper growth plans.

To get to Saxavord, travellers must hopscotch, taking a ferry from mainland Shetland to Yell and then another to Unst, praying 30-year-old vessels are working. Breakdowns happen so often that depopulation is a real fear and Unst islanders want tunnels – like the neighbouring Faroe Islands. You can’t “grow” island industries, where basic transport is unreliable. Good infrastructure is vital. It’s what Norway did with its oil fund. Yet across Scotland and the UK, so much is missing, old or substandard and go-ahead communities like Unst and Yell are powerless to do anything about it.

Compare and contrast.

In Iceland, the Westman Islands wouldn’t be habitable today without the tiny local council that quickly handled a new volcano that erupted overnight in 1973 without needing help/advice/expertise from Reykjavik. The islanders’ quick thinking kept lava flows out of their vital harbour and let them set up district heating from the volcanic heat.

It also produced enough electricity to power a council-managed dual-fuel ferry which has really powered growth. And it was possible ONLY because tiny Westman has the knowledge, responsibility and agency to act.

Communities in Scotland and the rest of top-down Britain do not.

In truth, much of the growth Reeves describes is just partly undoing the damage of being British.

Scots inhabit a country with nationalised water supplies and that should save us from shelling out to remedy the terrible failures of England’s privatised water resource – so bad that two new reservoirs must be built before the Oxbridge Ring can get going. But as UK taxpayers, we’ll still be footing the bill.

Scots inhabit a country that managed to overcome worries about the look of wind turbines by facing the fact of climate change. Yet we must still fork out to help England get up to speed with onshore wind and meantime send our renewable energy south while paying extra for grid connection.

And of course, Scots voted Remain – rejoining the EU or EFTA would boost UK growth faster than any of Rachel Reeves’s proposals. But that ain’t gonnae happen.

So, her growth strategy is very high stakes. If Rachel Reeves fails to achieve it by bending over backwards to international capital, she will seal Labour’s fate and succeed only in shifting the political dial to the far right, endorsing the market-led policies previously espoused by the Conservatives and rolling the lawn for Reform and their “strategy” of total deregulation. Well done, girl.

If she wins, selected bits of England will inch out of the doldrums.

If she loses, Labour will never recover. They’ve ditched the poor and vulnerable.

Now they are out-Torying the Tories. I’m sure ass-kicking Rachel Reeves believes she’s left Labour flying high.

But to paraphrase Buzz Lightyear – 30 years old next month – “That’s not flying. That’s falling with style.”

Resilient Iceland film Hveragerdi, Hot Springs Town and Westman – The Island That Stopped A Volcano are already on YouTube. Geothermal Power – The Key To Warm And Toasty Iceland will be posted on Monday. Get the YouTube link via lesleyriddoch.com/films