Sorry Nicola, but you don’t want the job – and you’re not even running for it

Jonathan Brocklebank

THERE is a programme on TV next week I have been steeling myself to see. It is a head-to-head debate between the only two politicians with any realistic chance of occupying No 10 after the General Election.

For those fed up with politicians, sick to the back teeth of Brexit and envious of all countries not spending their festive seasons knee deep in constitutional psycho-dramas, this will be sobering viewing.

But we are where we are and this is important stuff. Either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn will lead our land – the United Kingdom, that is – after December 12 and the choice is not theirs but ours.

It seems entirely appropriate, therefore, that before taking part in a ballot we know will decide the identity of the next prime minister, we see both men go head-to-head.

And, cheerless as this spectacle may be to some, it could be worse.

It could be the by-now familiar free-for-all featuring multiple smaller parties, all of them squawking over each other like cockatiels in the battle for airtime supremacy.

It could be the usual shambles where everyone accuses everyone else of being undemocratic, no one can complete a sentence – least of all the host – and droves of voters are persuaded only of the urgent need to switch channels.

Simplicity

Yes, if the ITV debate on Tuesday has one thing in its favour, it is simplicity. Here are our two prime ministerial candidates, this is the fankle we’re in, now watch (in abject horror if you prefer) as they argue their cases for occupying our highest political office.

It will surprise no one that Nicola Sturgeon, who is not standing in this election and whose party is fielding no candidates in most of the 650 seats, is not on board with ITV’s debate between Messrs Johnson and Corbyn.

It is her position that it’s ‘fundamentally unfair’ not to include her party which, you will be aware, is a big noise in Scotland – home to only 9 per cent of Westminster’s constituency seats. How dare ITV even consider screening a debate for the prize of PM and exclude the SNP, which doesn’t want the job and has no one running for it?

No, if ITV is to have a faceoff between prospective prime ministers, then viewers in Brighton and Birmingham and Bangor must also hear regular interventions from Scottish nationalists with no interest in being prime minister, so the argument goes.

And if ITV is serious about denying the shrill lament of nationalism a microphone then the SNP will see them in court. The case calls in the High Court in London on Monday. As a democrat (and a bona fide one at that, not the pretendy kind who can’t accept referendum results) I say it is vital the SNP has the opportunity to get its message across in this election.

People should know the party wants two more referendums next year to overturn the results of the ones in 2014 and 2016 which did not go its way. They should appreciate that politics is fair and democratic for the SNP only when it wins stuff – and outrageously unfair, anti-democratic and antiScottish the other times.

It is for this reason that I would have some sympathy with the party’s bid for inclusion in the ITV debate if it were the only show in town. Of course it is not.

It is merely the only show offering a presidential-style debate between the men who – from a UK-wide perspective – are the key figures in this election. The other TV debates are your standard multi-party squawk-fests. I wish ITV well in court for many reasons, but all file neatly under the same heading: pleasure in seeing the bully bashed.

Paroxysms

In Scotland, nobody browbeats the media like the SNP. Some of its leaders appear to think they, rather than media organisations, should choose which journalists cover which political stories.

It was, of course, the arrival of then BBC political editor Nick Robinson in Scotland to cover the final stages of the independence referendum campaign which sent the SNP into paroxysms of fury and provoked a protest march on the BBC’s Scottish HQ.

For their cheek in allowing an Englishman to ruffle SNP feathers in Scotland, the BBC ultimately had to launch a whole new channel in Scotland at a cost of £32million a year. No one watches it.

We live in a land whose former First Minister was petulant enough to ban several newspapers, including this one, from the press conference in which he resigned – and to try to tell another newspaper which reporter it must send.

We have politicians who even seem to imagine it is incumbent on the arts community to dance to the beat of its nationalist drum.

Artists don’t have to be close to government, said Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop in one of the SNP administration’s most sinister pronouncements a couple of years ago. ‘They just have to have a common understanding of what a country wants.’ They absolutely do not. The thought that they should do is terrifying.

In years to come, students will write essays about the abuse of power in small countries and cite the SNP as exhibit A. Thank heaven that, for now, we’re still part of a larger playground with bigger boys in it than they.