A week today is St Andrew's Day and the tenth anniversary of a speech given by First Minister Jack ­McConnell at what was then the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama to an audience of students and leading figures from the arts in Scotland.

It was a celebrated occasion because it clearly put cultural concerns at the heart of government north of the Border. "Arts for all can be a reality, a democratic right and an achievement of the 21st century," he said.

For obvious political reasons, the current Scottish Government has not made much of the echoes of that sentiment. In Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop's agenda-setting Talbot Rice speech this year she put deliberate distance between herself and Maria Miller of the Westminster administration by emphasising that Holyrood saw the arts as having fundamental value of themselves, rather than being measured in terms of the economic return that investment in them could be measured to generate. That speech is expected to form the basis of a national cultural strategy enshrined in the independence White Paper published on Tuesday, which the SNP will be hoping will secure the backing of the cultural community for a Yes vote next September.

Let's take a longer view, though. We've had a decade of consensus among Scottish politicians - even if it sometimes looks anything but - that the arts are not just important, but key to government policy at central and local levels. And bear in mind that local authority spend, at not far short of £200 million even now, still exceeds that of central government. As people like the new director of the National Theatre of Scotland, Laurie Sansom, and the RSNO's chief executive, Michael Elliott, have pointed out, the supportive and nurturing atmosphere in Scotland is a far cry from the world of cuts they have witnessed south of the Border.

That is the context in which the debacle of Creative Scotland had to be seen, why it was hugely ­embarrassing, and why Hyslop has been anxious to paint it as evidence of the sort of healthy debate we can have in Scotland (although that is probably not the way that departed CEO Andrew Dixon sees it, however triumphant he may be feeling at being part of the team that won Hull the City of Culture title last week).

It is also the context in which the claim that Dundee was "too good" to win the same contest is not mere gallus swanking - because the City of Discovery already demonstrates that investment in the arts can be a game changer when jam, jute and even journalism are not enough to sustain the local community. If you believe that the City of Culture title should be an engine of economic regeneration, you don't give it to a place that is already cruising in the fast lane.

So let's put to bed that tiresome "wha's like us" cliche that Scotland "punches above its weight" when our national companies have triumphs overseas and our artists win international prizes.

As we gear up for St Andrew's Day 2013, it is the settled will of the Scottish people that art is simply something that we do.