Who is responsible for business in an irresponsible society?

Consumer electronics is one of the largest industries in the world, and yet now we have few, if any, significant British players. The business leaders I met forty years ago explained that high taxes and punitive death duties that would limit your success and stop you giving your savings to your own children meant they felt there was no incentive to continue working. Why work hard and carry all the burdens and responsibilities of employing people, they said, to be opposed and vilified, and branded as a class enemy by nasty people who are envious of the fact that even someone more deserving and hardworking might have earned, or wish to earn, more money than them.

Margaret Thatcher changed public thinking and our tax system to some extent, but since her demise we have as a nation become more highly taxed and regulated than ever. Too few make the connection between the inevitable economic failure of collectivist policies, and the proclivity of the majority to vote for populist politicians who scapegoat the most creative, industrious and entrepreneurial people in society.

Wealth creators are accused of creating unfair inequality! Disparity in pre-tax income is viewed as unjust irrespective of merit, and no account is taken of the impact of taxes, or the value of state and public pensions and other similar benefits, despite the fact that the equivalent free market value of top public sector pensions is often millions of pounds. Public sector index-linked and inflation-proof pensions based on final salary and so on, add twenty five per cent or more on top of a public sector salary, and salaries in the cosseted public sector, especially in Scotland, are in excess of equivalents in the more productive private sector who are exposed to competition, and upon whom everyone else depends for wealth creation.

A successful immigrant businessman told me recently that he thought his third world country was corrupt because it was possible for people to bribe politicians, but has now come to understand that Britain, and in particular Scotland, is even more corrupt because our politicians are bribing the people with other people's money.

We are in the midst of probably the greatest period of irrational crowd behaviour since the greed-driven economic absurdity of Tulip Mania and the South Sea bubble. Failed collectivist policies which did so much damage to every aspect of our economy, and that have buried us in debt, always lead to economic ruin, but now they apparently command the support of over half the Scottish population. The private sector's businessmen, despite all the benefits they alone create, and which so many others feel so entitled to, are being hamstrung, disincentivised and unfairly exploited to a greater extent than was ever imaginable even in the darkest days of old Labour's misrule.

It appears that we are determined, not only to repeat the worst failures of the past, but are determined to make an even bigger mistake. Some Nationalists and Socialists apparently think that financial markets, the EU or the World Bank will support our endless spending spree and debt accumulation and bail us out in the same way England has always done since we were bankrupted by the Darien scheme.

Perhaps they should contemplate the difference in circumstances between the Irish who responsibly embraced genuine remedial austerity in honest recognition and recompense for their past irresponsible proclivities, with the irresponsible spendthrifts who are driving the Greeks into the abyss.

How can the British, and the Scots of all people, seek to emulate the Greeks, and be so much less responsibly inclined than the Irish? But make no mistake; for everyone in Scotland, not just those who our populist politicians and class warriors deem to be undeservedly rich, this election result will have a very detrimental impact on our wealth and health, and everything else that depends on letting our indigenous private sector flourish.

Ivor Tiefenbrun is a Scottish manufacturer