Jim Sillars is at it again.

He thinks trade unions and poverty action groups should be fighting the Scottish Government’s effective ban on “unconventional” oil and gas extraction – or fracking, as most of us know it.

Mr Sillars, now 80 and a former SNP deputy leader, suggested to the BBC that, despite the government’s conclusion that opposition to fracking amongst the public had been “overwhelming”, many had not even realised a public consultation had been going on.

He believes the green movement had taken advantage of that ignorance to give the impression that the general public is 99 per cent against fracking. And he added: “Joe Stalin used to get figures like that as well”.

Now, it could be said that in the event of Scottish independence, Mr Sillars may well be one of a small gang of protesters at Holyrood to say “Stop! This is the wrong kind of independence!” However, his dismay at the government’s announcement strikes a chord.

This is not an argument about whether or not fracking is a good idea. Although the government’s own experts recommended that it be allowed to go ahead, the leading geologist Prof John Underhill of Edinburgh University has said that basically we would be 55 million years too late – there is not enough gas down there to make a US-style fracking industry viable.

There are dichotomies in the SNP’s handling of this whole issue, ever since the chemical giant Ineos – one of Scotland’s biggest industrial employers – first expressed interest in onshore gas exploration.

First, we have a Scottish government in thrall to North Sea oil and gas, urging the UK Treasury to make life easier for exploration, and pressing energy companies to explore further, further west of Shetland, where there are reputed to be substantial reserves of oil.

Secondly, many Ineos jobs depend on a 25-year deal to ship US fracked gas, using eight specially-built tankers, into Grangemouth, for processing and distribution across Europe and beyond.

Like it or not, Scotland is quite dependent on oil and gas extraction. If we are squeamish about the environmental concerns over fracking, we seem unconcerned about the very similar methods used to force carbon based fuel from the seabed.

When environment minister Paul Wheelhouse announced the new ban recently in parliament, he received an encouraging pat from the First Minister, as if he were about to announce grave news of public concern, rather than a predictable slice of populism. The truth is that his announcement – however welcome it may have been to the anti-fracking movement – was far from convincing. The SNP bans fracking because lots of people do not like the idea, and no more than that. Dissenting voices are ignored. Mr Sillars, who argues the ban will cost jobs and increase fuel poverty, says trades unions and others should be pressing for a review.

“We are in the ridiculous position of having about 900,000 people living in fuel poverty. At the same time we are taking fracked gas from the United States across the Grangemouth,” he added.

There is a strong sense here that the SNP Government acts on the basis of populism alone. It has a strong aversion to controversial decisions. Its economic strategy is difficult to define, or even to discern. Last week, rather out of the blue, the First Minister announced the creation of a new State-owned energy company that will – somehow – intervene to bring down prices for consumers.

There were no details as to how this company would be structured, or how it might achieve an outwardly-laudable aim. The only detail covered by Ms Sturgeon was that electricity would be sourced at the lowest available prices; it has to be said that this principle applies to all energy distributors, in fact they are in business to do just that.

Might the new State enterprise enjoy overheads so low that they will massively under-cut those avaricious private distributors – SSE and Scottish Power, for example – who have shareholders to satisfy and management fat cats to look after? What happens if wholesale prices jump, do we subsidise the public company?

One cannot help feeling that this proposed venture – not to take place until 2021, conveniently the time of the next Holyrood elections – has its roots in spin and the focus group, rather than economics. Yes, there is fuel poverty in Scotland, but might it be tackled better by a real national effort to improve insulation, cut wasteful use, and intervene directly in cases of hardship? None of those things sound like grand initiatives, however. They make for dull headlines, or no headlines at all.

Whatever your views on the impact of fracking, or the price of electricity, the issue here is how apparently good decisions can be made, for all the wrong reasons. The government promises an energy strategy in December. We can only hope it will make interesting reading.