'When shall we three meet again?' enquired the earnest of the three, 'when the hurlyburly's done' said he with the ruffled hair and 'when the battle's lost and won' said the gruffest of the group. The true answer is Thursday evening for that is when the third and final of the leaders' debates will take place but it seems the trio's best laid plans may gang aglae.In a sensational (and expensive) move, the SNP is taking legal action over the party's exclusion from the debate next week. It is a great move, a potential masterstroke with so little time to go until the election itself and a near-guarantee that the SNP will be seen fighting for what it believes in for the remainder of the race.
A wide group of people who can view the situation objectively now agree that the SNP (and the Greens and UKIP etc) have been treated unfairly in being exlcuded from these debates. One only has to look at the meteoric rise in Lib Dem fortunes to see what could have been gained if Salmond had been included. I don't think one needs to again cite the flouted broadcasting rules to press the point home, except for the SNP in the courts of course.
So this morning's Scottish Sky debate should be enjoyed as it could well be the last such event north of Gretna.
And for those who fear that the SNP's move will bring down the whole debate on Scottish screens, I direct you to that other Macbeth line: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair. Hover through the fog and filthy air.'
In other words, nae breks.
31 comments:
As we don't have our own legal system in which we can challenge these perverse decisions we have to rely on OFGEM!!
I very much wish the SNP every success, as their success will also (hopefully) apply to Wales. My £25 has gone to the SNP fighting fund!
It is usually a big mistake for parties to make themselves the issue in an election.
Remember the Highland Alliance ? They were supposed to make an impact in the first Holyrood elections of 1999, but made their own work conditions (they wanted job-share MSPs) the main campaign issue. They sunk without trace.
If the SNP have £50,000 to spare, they would be better spending it on leaflets and billboards.
Jeff, your "Sun"/"Record"/"red top" title is wrong.
The SNP are fighting for inclusion not to block debate. They are fighing to stimulate debate and force the national bradcaster to comply. Please change your title.
In any case. I totally agre with this legal challenge. Apparently exclusion is what Brown/Cam and Clegg mean by a Fairer Britain.
I doubt legal action will reap much success but I am putting my money where my mouth is and fighting the good fight:
For democracy in Scotland and For democracy in Wales against an anglocentric hegemony and BBC bias and discrimination.
Good shout ED, changed it now.
I reckon I'll stump up later on too. A fair fight is worth fighting for.
Well, it looks as if my thought on the issue has not been approved... fair enough, but it's a lot milder than what Salmond's saying.
If there's a hint of tax-payer's money being used for this - as with the calls for an inquiry into Iraq - I seriously will consider pursuing my own complaint against the Party.
I've yet to see a single suggestion that the Scottish public is on-side with this display of childish petulance (I assume it would be being shouted from the rooftops, as opposed to Salmond decreeing what's best for Scotland).
NoOffenceAlan, never mind 1999, what about 2010 when Tory-supporting newspapers attempted a hatchet job on Clegg? I hope the same happens to the SNP. I really do.
There are good people voting SNP, and also good people in political power. But, the SNP =/= Scotland.
Can a Nat point me to a question asked in either debate so far that was exclusively English in nature? What have the people of Scotland actually missed out on by the Nats and their vision of Scotland not being there?
The arrogance of the SNP to assume that theirs is the only voice that speaks for Scotland is breathtaking.
And the more Alex Salmond moves away from independence and his stewardship of Scotland (i.e. an actual policy debate) towards his churlsih let me play too arguement, the more he devalues Scotland. His actions, and this legal stunt, are shameful and show Scotland in a bad light.
Alec,
I'm from the Scottish public and wholeheartedly support the SNP's fight against the hypocrisy and anti-democratic practices of the BBC.
I will be donating money to the SNP this afternoon.
So there's a "single suggestion" for you to chew over.
Mind you don't choke.
Anonymous, why can you not find a meaningful posting handle?
>> I'm from the Scottish public and wholeheartedly support [...]
That's not what I said, as I am quite sure you know. Individuals, or even groups of individuals can believe the moon is made of green cheese if they wish.
It makes no difference if they can't muster a majority or even a sizable plurality.
I come from the Scottish public, and oppose this. Ah-ha! You didn't think of that, did you?
I suspect Salmond knows this won't work, and is simply self-promoting. But, just as he couldn't put his money where his money was and self-financed the calls for an injury, so too here is he seeking outside funding.
How noble. Not.
As you would expect the core argument the SNP has is being twisted and misrepresented by the Unionist MSM and by their battalion of online supporters.
This election is NOT anout who becomes Prime Minister. That will be a consequence of the 650 separate elections that are happening on May 6th.
By excluding the SNP from any debate that is broadcast in Scotland they are being unfairly disadvantaged by not being able to state their case to the electorate of the 59 constituencies they are contesting.
As far as I can see, the SNP has no problem with a three party debate being broadcast to England. All it is arguing for is parity in any debate broadcast in Scotland and it has been completely open to any method of achieving this.
It's a real shame that some folk have a problem with public money being spent defending a perfectly legitimate action from the SNP but presumably the same folk have no difficulty with public money being used to sponsor this travesty of democracy in the first place.
Whether you agree with the SNP's point of view or not, if you are a democrat then this is an intolerable state of affairs.
I am sure that there is a case to be made by the electorate in terms of Human Rights also.
Good on the SNP and as a BBC licence payer I deplore what the BBC is doing with my money. I don't tend for voting for Lab Tory or Lib so why should I have to watch the 3 of them?
Alex Salmond won the Scottish debate with 45% and Murphy won 5%. This just confirms what Alex Salmond is on about.
" Mr Salmond came first in an STV online poll asking which leader performed best during the debate, with 45% of the votes cast. LibDem Alistair Carmichael was second with 33%, Conservative David Mundell scored 18% and Labour's Jim Murphy polled only 5% of votes"
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/172719-economy-the-main-event-of-scotish-leaders-debate/
Excellent ( if late) move by the SNP.
I don't believe the metropolitan wine bar suits from the Beeb ever considered it would come to this when they took the now familiar Seb Coe style, "f*ck 'em" line.
Right back at you chaps.
BBC scotland with blethery brian have stopped comments for last 24 hours. getting quite nasty I imagine as he tries to defned the indefensible about the PM debates, at least that is what the beeb continues to call them even if sky and itv had abandoned the pretence.
Hard for the beeb to justify their action, so they have not even tried to.
I expect the last week to be very balanced as the beeb need to superficially appear to be impartial, maybe even on the news at 6, even if it is for the first time ever.
Marr put in his pace this morning trying to be smart.
If 20% refuse to pay their licences as they do not get coverage of local politics then that would make life interesting!
Are you the same Anonymous? It's difficult to pin down anyone who won't afford others the basic courtesy of assuming a static identity.
>> I am sure that there is a case to be made by the electorate in terms of Human Rights also.
There was a time when "human rights" meant not having your village ransacked and your throat cut, or being thrown in gaol for political dissent... now it means not being able to watch Alex Salmond on telly.
Truth is the SNP missed a trick by NOT taking this action in the run up to the first debate (shown on that bastion of unionism... er ITV). The end result was that the SNP (or certainly Nicola Sturgeon) came accross as po faced whinging.
By the way representing the SNP should be Angus Robertson. Firstly, and more impotaintly, because he is actually standing in this election, and secondly because he does seem to be an assured performer so far in this campaign.
Alec,
No a different Anonymous.
The right that we are being refused is being exposed to all shades of political opinion which we have elected.
It is an outrage that a democratically elected party should be denied debating parity with its competitors.
Allan,
It is irrelevant who represents the party - it should be the party's choice as to who is best placed to make their case.
I can understand why others don't want their leaders exposed to debate on an equal footing with Salmond mind you.
I don't tend for voting for Lab Tory or Lib so why should I have to watch the 3 of them?
ALLAN 1
I'm not sure if this is serious, or in jest.
Alex Salmond won the Scottish debate with 45% and Murphy won 5%. This just confirms what Alex Salmond is on about.
All it confirms is that he was more assured than Murphy, which hardly is an achievement. Until now he has been the tallest man in Lilliput, against Holyrood politicos and domestic Scottish organizations.
Not only has he found that big-players such as the BBC aren't as receptive to such Rumpelstiltskin routines, but - with his performance until now based on smarming and brow-beating - he may well find himself being totally eclipsed by serious politicos.
Other Allan, that's a shame 'cos Sturgeon's one of those I do respect.
They couldn't take action until after the BBC trust's decision on Thursday.
I think they have a knockout case.
There's already a precedent in Scots Law: John Major's 1996 appearance on Panorama was blocked during the Scottish Local Elections.
I think the SNP has pursued every other option, and that this fact will also work well in their favour.
I think that if they make it to court, the BBC will be ordered to include them or be prevented from broadcasting the debates in Scotland.
It would be nice if monetary damages could be included in the suit as well.
The only reason that the SNP has not taken action thus far has got to be that they were working behind the scenes for something approaching parity. And as the appeal for £50,000 shows they are desperately short of money and painfully aware that lawyers for the EBC could expensively spin this one out.
As far as precedents go, there are two and both relate to political parity. The so called 'leaders debates' which changed to 'PMrial' are new in so far as the format agreed by the broadcasters and Unionist parties. I fail to see how any Court could rule otherwise than in favour of the SNP.
I have put my money where my mouth is and donated half a weeks wages and cancelled my direct debit for the TV licence, I would urge everyone else to do likewise at this blatant affront to democracy. It must be stated that every non-Nationalist I have spoke to disagrees with excluding representatives of SNP/Plaid.
Alec
>>There was a time when "human rights" meant not having your village ransacked and your throat cut, or being thrown in gaol for political dissent... now it means not being able to watch Alex Salmond on telly.<<
Utterly facetious, and the last line is just plain childish. Why do the views of around a third of the Scottish nation deserved to be ignored in your view?
Just a bit of history -
- but it was our own late great commie-nationalist Hugh MacDiarmid who changed forever the way elections were reported by the corporate media, the world over.
In 1950 MacDiarmid stood as a communist candidate, and out of principle, against the unopposed sitting MP for Kinross and Western Perthshire, and also the then Prime Minister, Alec Douglas-Home.
After the election MacDiarmid took Douglas-Home to court to have the election result made void because of the favourable media coverage given Douglas-Home, whilst MacDiarmid was completely ignored.
MacDiarmid lost his case but the way elections are now covered is largely result of this single case, the work of one of the founders of the SNP, Hugh MacDiarmid.
From an entry for Hugh MacDiarmid (Christopher Grieve) -
In a celebrated case (Grieve v Douglas-Home), he challenged the election, seeking it declared void by virtue of a breach of Section 63 of the Representation of the People Act, in that due balance had not been given to all candidates in the by-election. The long-term result was the care that broadcasters make to at least mention the names of all candidates in all elections covered by them.
http://graham.thewebtailor.co.uk/archives/000088.html
Anon (17:10)
Actually it's not irrelivant. For one Salmond is supposedly still running the parts of the country which is run by Holyrood, and secondly i suspect that some of the SNP candidates wouldn't actually mind coming out of Salmond's shadow. As I said earlier i was more impressed by Robertson's response to "The Leaders Debate" 2 than i was to Sturgeon's response, which seemed to consist of just moaning that it shouldn't be on the screens because it was irelivant.
Interestingly enough, i'm in the middle of a post about the SNP leaflet I recieved yesterday. There's no mention of Salmond in there.
Alec
Please help me out, I cant think of the "serious politicos" you are referring too?? Please enlighten me and everyone else who they are.
If they are from Labour or the Conservatives then don't bother replying because then I will know your at the ham.
You remind me of some of the remedial Scottish news papers journalists we unfortunately have in this country who are of a mixed metaphor of being something stupid or something completely stupid.
The post about MacDiarmid and Douglas-Home is pretty inaccurate. Look at the bit I did on Subrosa a while ago. MacDiarmid stood against Home in 1964 GE.
Strathturret, no offense, but could you give a link?
>> Utterly facetious, and the last line is just plain childish. Why do the views of around a third of the Scottish nation deserved to be ignored in your view?
When accusing others of facetiousness, it's not done to make basic a priori errors.
Who said human rights were the only cases worthy of consideration?
Who said the voters who do vote for the SNP want them included in the debate?
Who said Salmond speaks for the "Scottish nation"? Okie, I know the answer to that.
>> Please help me out, I cant think of the "serious politicos" you are referring too?? Please enlighten me and everyone else who they are.
Utterly facetious, and the last line is just plain childish. People who, at least, have experience on the floor of the Commons (where they don't have to be reminded that calling others saps or numpties is not protocol) for a start.
Alec
People who call the First Minister a numpty then told to withdraw the daft comment in my view are saps.
Hopefully tonights polls will show Labour still in 3rd place and 13 years of tyranny will hopefully be diminished and Labours saps confined to the chapters of history.
QuietReckoning:
There is another precedent. In the 2005 General Election the BBC had a "Leaders' Special" on Question Time where Charles Kennedy, Michael Howard and Tony Blair were given half an hour to answer questions from the audience. The three leaders each had a separate half hour slot on the same program.
The BBC then broadcast an SNP "Leaders' Special" in Scotland with Alex Salmond and one with PC's Elfyn Llwyd in Wales. In 2005 they regarded equal airtime for the SNP, the Tories, Labour and the Lib-Dems in Scotland as essential.
In 2010 the put the Labour, Tory and Lib-Dems leaders on the stage at the same time and cut the SNP and PC out completely.
If the SNP and PC were deemed to need parity of exposure and equal airtime in 2005 what's changed in 2010?
I'm still unclear as to what the SNP's proposed solution for the debates is. They don't (it seems) want Salmond to be given a podium alongside Clegg, Cam and Broon and broadcast to the whole UK. Do they want a fourth, Scotland-only debate, with the UK leaders plus Salmond (or whoever)? But that still wouldn't be parity, as there'd have been three debates without the SNP. Preventing the debates from being broadcast here would also be pretty pointless, as we'd still get the endless analysis which is probably more important than the event itself. Can anyone tell me what the ideal outcome would be?
NoOffenceAlan, never mind 1999, what about 2010 when Tory-supporting newspapers attempted a hatchet job on Clegg? I hope the same happens to the SNP. I really do.
Alec, that's been happening to a greater or lesser degree for yonks. When the SNP aren't seen as a major threat (as in this election), they're regarded with a kind of dismissive derision. When they are a threat, this is upgraded to overt hostility. Exactly as has happened to the LDs over the last couple of weeks. Any party with no institutional newspaper or broadcasting support can expect its treatment in the media to oscillate between these two positions.
Thanks for the correction Strathturret.
1950 was the previous election Grieves stood in.
He was a founding member of the National Party of Scotland, one of the two fore-runners of the SNP -
By-elections of the Century - a Guest Post by Strathturret
Subrosa
02 Feb 2010
I see Alec is back with his usual collection of illogical ungrammatical unionist gibberish.
There was a time when "human rights" meant not having your village ransacked and your throat cut, or being thrown in gaol for political dissent... now it means not being able to watch Alex Salmond on telly.
- Apparantly democracy isn't a human right anymore.
Alec better tell that to his pals in the British state who are fighting, dying and murdering to bring democracy to Iraq and Afghanistan. Democracy-building in the Middle East is not that important.
Maybe British troops can come back to Britian and fight for our rights in Scotland to have our voices heard in Westminster, but I doubt.
Who said Salmond speaks for the "Scottish nation"? Okie, I know the answer to that.
- Certainly not unionists who are censoring him out of political debate. Obviously they know so much about what people's opinion are I'm surprised they're even bothering to hold elections anymore.
In the long run this is, of course, good for the SNP.
Douglas' comment kind of sums up the umionist mindset on this: "The arrogance of the SNP to assume that theirs is the only voice that speaks for Scotland is breathtaking."
No Douglas - what is breathtaking is the stupidity of unionists in telling voters in Scotland (and Wales) that their parties are irrelevant in this debate because the outcome will be decided by voters in England.
That is effectively what they are saying. If they really wanted to do what was best for the Union they would have made sure that the SNP and Plaid were represented because that would have sent out a message about the unity and inter-dependence of the British nations.
Instead they have done the opposite and underlined our separateness.
Thanks!
There is desperation on show all right but it is all coming from the Unionist side of the argument.
The SNP has a case which it wants tested in the courts. What is the problem? Are the SNP to be denied even that basic right?
I wouldn't expect anything else from Labour and Tory but it is outrageous that the Illiberal Undemocrats are not fully behind the SNP's case for a fair hearing.
I suspect Clegg knows he wouldn't look so different to Brown and Cameron when there is a real alternative on offer.
Cameron and Brown could use the line Clegg is taking to outflank him by agreeing to let others participate in the last debate.
Alec
>>When accusing others of facetiousness, it's not done to make basic a priori errors.<<
Methinks you as always are acting ultra vires!
>>Who said human rights were the only cases worthy of consideration?<<
Probably you in a strawman quest.
Who said the voters who do vote for the SNP want them included in the debate?
You are not a serious guy at all are you. Is democracy an abstract concept for you? Or do you consider that Scots are somehow not worthy of equitable treatment unless they.........ask for it? In the name ae the wee man!
>>Who said Salmond speaks for the "Scottish nation"? Okie, I know the answer to that.<<
As do we, you have decided this strawman argument is worthy of knocking doon........fill yir boots but stop trying to get on everyones tits that are serious about this issue.
Joe
>>I see Alec is back with his usual collection of illogical ungrammatical unionist gibberish.<<
Nah he is just at the madam, and eedjits like us are responding to it. No-one serious would put up the arguments he does...........just leave him to his own strawman creations that he can demolish at will. Should he decide to put up credible points then he may just be worth engaging, in the meantime his contributions equate to being a pain in the hin end.
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