Holyrood gets back to business today after a summer break that was neither very summery nor very much of a break. Indeed, so active have the past eight weeks been for politicians and the media in Scotland that one could well understand the plaintive note struck by one Labour MSP, who told me recently: “I wish this recess would end so we could all get back to a bit of peace and quiet.”

By-elections, both past and upcoming, party leadership resignations and succession contests and the continuing argument over Scotland's constitutional future have ensured that the everyday stuff of politics - how it affects people's ordinary lives - has been more or less overlooked.

That should change to some degree tomorrow, when the SNP administration at Holyrood unveils its second legislative programme, made up of 15 Bills. The first such programme last year was pretty thin and uncontroversial gruel, mainly because of the constraints of minority government.

In that context, to this commentator's mind, the outstanding political and parliamentary achievement over the past 12 months, apart from Alex Salmond's cunning ability to set and hold the agenda, was John Swinney's handling of his first Budget Bill - an object lesson on how to win political friends and influence people. This year's Budget Bill will need similar delicate footwork on the part of Mr Swinney - will the Tories help him out for a second year in a row?

The programme for the next ten months should have a bit more meat on it this year, particularly in controversial areas such as criminal justice - where Kenny MacAskill may well drive forward his demand that community sentences should replace prison for more minor offences. Mr MacAskill is also, rightly many will feel, promoting the idea that drunkeness should not be regarded as a mitigating factor in sentencing. However, Mr MacAskill's idea that under-21s should not be allowed to buy alcohol in off-licences appears a policy made in haste but to be repented upon at leisure. Whether provision will made for it in this legislative programme remains to be seen.

Other measures such as those covering climate change, flooding, the marine environment, improving the nation's health and the decoupling of local and national elections will be largely uncontroversial.

The big question is whether, now that the consultation is completed, Mr Salmond and Mr Swinney will be brave enough to produce a Bill for a local income tax to replace council tax. Given that the SNP attracted a fair amount of votes in the 2007 election for just such a measure, a failure to do so would undoubtedly mean that the Nationalists are running scared in the face of outright hostility from the Scottish businesss community.

Mr Salmond, though, will, as he did last year, concentrate on measures which do not need parliamentary approval. The SNP have built their populism over the past year by dint of what has been termed ministerial fiat: measures such as the saving of local accident and emergency units, cheaper prescriptions and a reduction in class sizes (now running, however, into much parental flak) allowed the SNP to claim that they were implementing their manifesto.

Now that their first year in office is over it will be difficult for the Nationalists to raid that manifesto for many more policy rabbits to pull out of the hat, although their spin doctors are not disputing the prospect of a surprise when MSPs hear their programme tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, Scottish Labour will tell us in ten days time which victim (sorry, leader) they have chosen to go head to head with Mr Salmond. This leadership contest has given the word “dull” a whole new dimension. There has been, on the part of all three contestants, a stubborn inability to ask the Scottish party hard questions. How, for example, do you repair a party machine, once so powerful, but now, as Glasgow East showed, fit only for the knacker's yard? Another by-election humiliation for Gordon Brown and Scottish Labour looms soon in Glenrothes. It is difficult in any case to see Labour clambering from the pit of gloom it is in, unless Mr Brown can disprove the widespread opinion that as a Prime Minister he has been the wrong man in the wrong job.

The affable Tavish Scott, the new Liberal Democrat leader, will make his parliamentary debut in that role this week. Can he rediscover relevance for his party? Annabel Goldie will continue to entertain us as Scottish Tory leader but can she continue playing footsie with the Nationalists while appearing a dyed-in-the-wool Unionist at the same time?

The Calman Commission will report on Holyrood's future powers towards the end of the year, but the great expectations attached to it may yet prove unfulfilled, ensuring that the really big argument - independence versus more devolved powers - will rumble on as an insistent background chorus to everything else.

Yes, Scottish politics is back. But, then again, it never really went away.