The apparent confusion on the part of some political commentators in Scotland at the sight of a functioning plural democracy is informative.

In their eyes, the election of a centre-right government in Norway is a hammer blow to the hopes of social democrats in Scotland.

So let's get one thing absolutely clear - no major party in any of the Nordic nations has entered any election campaigning for the low-wage, low-productivity, low-innovation economy we have in Britain. None of them are challenging the immensely popular universal public services that mark out Nordic society. There is no serious opposition to the shared awareness that the environment matters. There isn't even a serious argument in favour of a low-tax future.

There are debates about immigration, gay marriage, the EU, tax rates, market provision of services, war and peace, and many other issues. But these are debates about half a dozen versions of the Nordic model, not a question about its future. Even the most reactionary governments in the Nordic region are delivering social and economic outcomes that the British people can only dream of. The centre of their politics and the centre of our politics are in radically different places.

And yes, there are many versions of the Nordic model. As well as a centre left and centre right they have strong greens, socialists, libertarians and a range of parties which define the "centre" in different ways. Almost all the Nordic countries have some form of regional party, usually representing the interests of their rural communities. When you have a healthy society, diversity is normal.

Britain, meanwhile, is offered two versions of a low-wage economy - one with cash transfers to the poor, the other with emergency payments to the poor. Where Nordic politics agrees about sharing economic growth among the people, British politics agrees on sharing austerity among the people. Their politics agrees on the benefits of universal public services, ours agrees on the need to ration public services. They agree that growth must be based on productivity and innovation, Westminster agrees that growth must be based on cost-cutting and speculation.

What the Norwegian elections really show is that genuinely plural politics in a genuinely competitive economy with genuinely high social cohesion and no real poverty is not only possible, it is normality for millions of our neighbours.

We've been sucked into the belief that there is no alternative; to our failing economy, to our corrupted politics, to our fragmenting society. We've been fooled into thinking that Westminster is normal, that apathy and alienation are normal, that finding endemic poverty in one of the world's richest countries is normal. These things are not normal - or they needn't be.

The Common Weal project isn't about creating a novelty replica of an imaginary Scandinavia and it is certainly not about creating one political opinion without diversity. It is about achieving a better socioeconomic foundation for Scotland precisely to allow genuinely diverse and plural politics to flourish.

The project is driven by the pragmatic attempt to identify where success has been achieved elsewhere and to work out how it was achieved. Crucially it then seeks to develop a distinctive version which is applicable to the Scotland we have today. It draws heavily (though by no means exclusively) from the Nordic nations because their social and economic outcomes are so good. Surely this approach makes sense? If you can find any social or economic statistic which would make you favour the British model over the Nordic one, you're either a multi-millionaire or a masochist.

There are those who mock Scotland's social democratic consensus as unthinking at the same time as they lay garlands at the feet of Westminster's vicious economic consensus. What they really hate is that Scotland's social democratic consensus includes its citizens.

Whatever happens in next year's referendum, I sincerely hope that the legacy with which Scotland is left is a proper understanding that alternative ways of running a country really are possible. It would be great if we discovered what plural democracy looks like into the bargain.

Britain has become an enclosed political machine for the super-rich in which the rest of us are trusted to do no more than select our executioner. In the end, it's our shrivelled and emaciated political culture which is blinding us to reality; this really is not as good as it gets.