The Beeb’s Scottish Six and why the SNP won’t hand over the remote
Yet again the Nationalists clamour for their precious Scottish Six – that we be tuned out of the BBC’s main evening news programme and enjoy instead a Scottish one, anchored in Glasgow and covering issues national and international.
Right now, they thundered this week, the BBC ‘is not delivering for Scotland’. And there are complaints of Corporation bias, declining production values, scant Scottish drama, incessant repeats…
Coming from the SNP, the latter is a little rich. It is already booming of a second independence referendum barely two years after the last one and not a month seems to pass when some Nationalist or other bashes the BBC and demands a Scottish Six.
At least Dad’s Army is funny. there is little evidence, as yet, that most Scottish viewers want such Caledonian table d’hôte to watch during their tea, far less with the vehemence of so many Nationalists. Nor has television news quite the heft it once had.
By far the most useful broadcast news platform is BBC Radio 4 and most of us now keep ourselves up to date with events in the wider world by news websites and social media, grounding that (if we are wise) by reading a decent newspaper or two each morning.
No doubt BBC Scotland occasionally struggles to deliver. After nine years of SNP government we are likewise still waiting for local government finance reform and, months after the Scottish parliament election, serious evidence that education is indeed the ‘top priority’ of this new SNP term.
But sweet reason and inconvenient truths mean little to those for whom the Scottish Six has become totemic, all-consuming and entire obsession, the charge this week being led by John Nicolson, the lush Nationalist MP for east Dunbartonshire – and the latest, increasingly sinister, evidence of building SNP obsession for control.
AS parliament this week conducted the usual once-a-decade debate about BBC funding – a war broadly waged with the Guardian on one side and scowling tories on the other, and when the Corporation is always at its most vulnerable – Nicolson, his party’s culture spokesman, jumped in with both boots.
‘I believe in the concept of a separate Scottish Six,’ he declared, tabling a fierce amendment. ‘For a significant period of time it’s been clear the BBC is not delivering for Scotland in the way it should be.
‘there lies a problem, I think, at the heart of BBC Scotland. Without a fairer share of the licence fee, without greater control over its own budget, without the authority to make commissioning decisions, BBC Scotland too often relies on the decisions of executives in London.
‘Meaningful editorial and financial control must be transferred north of the Border…’
the amendment fell, both Government and Labour MPs wheeling on such suggestions.
For one, whatever sort of Scottish Six emerges – if it emerges – is best left to the good judgment of BBC bosses and the normal processes of editorial commissioning, not to the whim of politicians.
For another, Mr Nicolson embodies the very real danger of so reordering BBC Scotland as, effectively, to make it accountable to the SNP administration in edinburgh.
A posh, assured Glaswegian lounge lizard, he enjoyed a long and high-profile career as a broadcaster. As a politician, he personifies the virtue signalling, self-consciously ‘progressive’ outlook of professional Nationalists at their worst.
When, earlier this year, John Nicolson came top of the glorified raffle by which a few MPs annually get the chance to table a Private Member’s Bill, he had his pick of dozens of issues of immediate interest to the mass of ordinary people, not least in his own constituency, and which could have wrought practical benefit for millions.
Instead, Mr Nicolson preened himself like a well-fed partridge before last week’s SNP conference. ‘And what key and cutting issue for the people of Scotland was he proposing?’ snorted eminent Free Church minister David Robertson.
‘He is putting forward a Private Member’s Bill that pardons gay men found guilty of a crime that is no longer a crime. When he announced that he was doing this with the support of the tories he was greeted with rapturous applause.
‘Really? With all that faces us in Scotland and the UK, this is the key issue?’
It typifies a brand of SNP politics only ‘progressive’ on issues dear to the hearts of rich gala luncheon edinburgh Festival types, the party otherwise very much at home with big business, bankers and cynical trade deals with Communist China.
though few noticed, the conference agenda last week included not one proposed resolution on taxation and the economy.
Only the brave asked aloud why, after nine years of Nationalist government, the country suddenly needs a Child Poverty Act.
But raising any question that makes Nationalists uncomfortable, or that might embarrass the Scottish Government, is growing ever more difficult.
there is little effective opposition at Holyrood apart from the tories. With only three of Scotland’s Westminster seats held by other parties, there is dwindling interest in our internal affairs in the Commons.
the SNP already has a strong grip on Scotland’s local government and next May it is likely to win overwhelming command of our town halls. It has centralised on all fronts, sunk its tentacles deep and far into practically every realm of public life.
THeRe is already widespread and palpable intimidation. Bodies dependent on Scottish Government funding trod the daintiest of lines through the independence referendum. Or are lent on to ‘disinvite’ from celebratory dinners guests not in good favour with the Nationalists. Or send in their PR honchos to warn you that what you propose to write or say ‘might embarrass the Scottish Government’.
Nothing is more tightly controlled by the SNP than Nationalists. MPs and MSPs are forbidden publicly to demur from any SNP policy. No minister can make a speech, or go on a programme, without direct permission (and script clearance) by Nicola Sturgeon herself.
We are fast approaching a point where Nationalist words no longer have meaning. John Swinney was last week asked who spoke for the 30 per cent of habitual SNP supporters who voted to leave the eU. He said only: ‘We have an open debate at our conference.’
Not one Nationalist MP, MSP or councillor had dared speak up for Brexit. Swinney said: ‘Nicola was speaking for the whole of Scotland who voted to remain.’ In fact, less than half the Scottish electorate voted Remain: the poll was about the United Kingdom (Scotland was not on the ballot paper) and some 400,000 SNP supporters voted Leave.
Sturgeon does not even speak for the whole of the SNP and it is in just such a context that the SNP and the Scottish Government must be held to close account by a robust and responsible media; called out, bluntly, when they tell lies.
Yet Nicolson was very vocal in the row over talented StV journalist Stephen Daisley for occasionally poking fun at the Nats on the station website or writing thoughtful, not uncritical pieces on SNP policy.
Daisley had every right to do so: Ofcom rules of political neutrality apply only to broadcast material, not written commentary.
Nor did he ever use his official StV twitter account to post links to satirical or controversial websites, though Nicolson has repeatedly, publicly claimed he did. StV appeared to have buckled and Stephen Daisley’s blogging ceased.
there may be a (thin) case for a Scottish Six. But, given the Nats’ track record, the tide of events and an increasingly uneasy culture in Scotland’s public life, the Scottish Government must firmly be denied the slightest control of it.