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A Dark Day for the Scottish Press

Jan 27

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood | 12 Comments

Some of history’s greatest American journalists are working right now. Exceptional minds with years of experience and an unshakable devotion to reporting the news. But these voices are a small minority now and they don’t stand a chance against the circus when the circus comes to town. They’re over matched. I’m quitting the circus, switching teams. I’m going with the guys who are getting creamed. I’m moved. They still think they can win and I hope they can teach me a thing or two.

From this moment on, we’ll be deciding what goes on our air and how it’s presented to you based on the simple truth that nothing is more important to a democracy than a well-informed electorate. We’re not waiters in a restaurant, serving you the stories you asked for, just the way you like them prepared. Nor are we computers, dispensing only the facts because news is only useful in the context of humanity.

The above is a quote from Aaron Sorkin’s excellent TV show The Newsroom where the main character decides to move away from the tired excuse for journalism that reporting in the US has become in order to usher in News Night 2.0.

As this weekend’s reporting of Scottish Politics testifies, we could do with a bit of the same in this country.

In my own job, as an accountant, there is often pressure to obscure the facts, to downplay bad news and exaggerate the good news. A particularly senior manager once told us to remember that we in Finance should be the single arbiter of the truth, the honest broker and that we should never go native in aligning ourselves with the somewhat murkier business side of our company, those that we face off to that don’t own the reported numbers. I would expect that if there was any other profession out there that should hold the same mindset, it would be journalism.

So it was depressing to read Nicola Sturgeon’s account of the backstory behind the BBC’s news article headlined “EU application would take time” that suggested a difference in opinion between Ireland and the Scottish Government on Scotland’s continued membership of the EU, post-independence. The Irish Minister herself has written to Nicola Sturgeon “concerned that an interview which I conducted with the BBC is being misconstrued” and was of the belief that she “thought that my reply was largely in line with that of the Scottish Government”.

The clear inference to be drawn is that a decision was taken, subconsciously or otherwise, that such alignment between Ireland and the Scottish Government would not be newsworthy and Lucinda Creighton’s quotes would have to be cherry-picked in order to carve out a certain angle, a negative angle, as seems to have been the case.

That the national news organisation should take a foreign Minister’s words “out of context” (according to the Minister herself) should concern us all, but how many people will delve past the headlines and the news stories on the BBC website to know what’s really going on? Not many, sadly. The Scottish public’s news stories are being served to them warm, just the way they like them.

It is, regrettably, a similar story today for the Scotland on Sunday.

The paper has kicked off its “Scotland Decides” series today by inviting Nicola Sturgeon to write an article for the paper on the constitutional question. The front page has the paper’s own take on the arguments being made by the Deputy First Minister and it seems to have fallen back on old tricks once again.

The Scotland on Sunday’s classic ruse is to talk up how balanced it is being when it invites a senior SNP individual to write for it, only to paint the SNP in a negative light with a dubious spin on said article from its all important front page.

That was Stephen Noon’s experience last month when he wrote a wonderful article for the paper about how each Scottish political party could help drive an independent Scotland forwards in their own way and that Stephen wouldn’t be sure who he would vote for in that happy scenario. The SoS’ front page ran with the angle ‘SNP could disband after independence’. This was not at all the message Stephen was looking to get across and his positive arguments were drowned out by a rather hollow debate surrounding the SNP as an entity post-2014.

It was the Deputy First Minister’s turn today with the opening lines of the front page article rather negatively stating that “Voting “No” in the independence referendum would be “a vote for nothing”…, Nicola Sturgeon claims today”.

However, the quote was truncated and missed out the “other than” which is in Nicola’s own article, significantly altering the meaning of what that part of the article was about, that voting No will result in no guaranteed changes to Scotland’s constitutional setup.

This difference changes the meaning from saying (quite reasonably) that a vote for the status quo brings no change to a suggestion that the UK has no value, you are voting for something worthless (which would be unreasonable).

These examples of the questionable objectives and purpose of the Scottish press abound, across the entire gamut of Scottish political reporting, and have become very tiring indeed. This is where I could put in a few petty paragraphs regarding the Scotland on Sunday’s circulation and BBC Scotland’s downwards spiralling budgets, but nobody wins if you go down that road of mutual loathing.

A strong Scotland requires a strong press, which is why I bought copies of both the Sunday Herald and Scotland on Sunday today, but a basic requirement of the Scottish press must surely be that it respects the Scottish Government, whichever party forms it, and treats it with decency and integrity.

We’ll continue to stay a long way from that goal for as long as the circus remains in town.

A political machine that gives change

Jan 26

Posted by Dom in Culture, Democracy, Education, Equality, Europe, International, Society | 6 Comments

I’m leaving Sweden, again. It feels good to be heading back to my flat in Leith, to Stereo in Glasgow and all my friends, to the Cairngorms, to Frightened Rabbit and Easter Road, CalMac ferries and Scotrail sprinter trains. I would also have put Innis and Gunn Rum Cask on the list, but the Swedish alcohol monopoly sees fit to stock the stuff to an admirable degree.

I’ve been away for a half-year now, watching the independence referendum from afar. I’ve seen TV clips of Johann Lamont declare Scotland a something-for-nothing society before finishing my breakfast and going to work with better paid colleagues at publicly funded Swedish universities. I’ve been forced to turn down Facebook invites to a succession of Nordic Horizons events at the Scottish Parliament, but then had the pleasure of seeing the ideas they promote in action every day.

I’ve heard the Better Together campaign say that modern Scotland is as good as it gets, then walked out of my front door to see a version of urban life which is in many ways better.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a Green party take its place as the third party in parliament and take on both left and right on the environment, on child poverty and on the terrible state of privatized railways. Every day on my way to the metro station I pass three different council-run nursery schools and men with pushchairs taking their paternity leave whilst their partners return to work.

I’ve been able to live cheaply in cooperatively run housing with district heating and communal facilities, so well insulated that I often don’t even need to have the radiator on.

I’ve met young Green activists who, unlike young people in Scotland and the rest of Britain, seem to have a genuine belief in their ability to change their country for the better.  I’ve hung out with girls from a design school who one day decided that all of the products they made should have zero environmental impact and then set about making it happen.

I’ve talked to writers and journalists who are all part of a vibrant cultural arena, and seen what proper funding can do for political diversity (all Swedish parliamentary parties are given money to stimulate debate and encourage youth politics, as well as to maintain a small staff).

I will be sad to leave Sweden, though it is not a country without its own problems (not least a worrying consumerism which accompanies being one of the world’s richest countries), but I come back over the North Sea with a sincere belief that a Scandinavian style approach in Scotland is not just desirable, but both possible and necessary. Britain today is not as good as it gets.

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Cameron’s Europe speech and Scotland’s referendum

Jan 23

Posted by Jeff in Holyrood | 22 Comments

In the aftermath of David Cameron’s speech on Europe, there is no avoiding considering the impact that a ~2016/2017 EU referendum may have on the 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

It is interesting to first note that the Prime Minister intends to fix the UK’s relationship with the EU before we take to the polls whereas with the independence referendum any improvement to the current arrangement was kicked out to after 2014 and promised as ‘jam tomorrow’. Read into that what you will.

There is an argument that this Europe referendum will muddy the independence waters and mentally bind people into the UK’s future. For example, even SNP MP Pete Wishart was talking about how “we” would be having this referendum in 2017, clearly subconsciuously visualising taking part in it. An EU referendum ahead of us and an Olympics just behind us. It’ll continue to be difficult for Yes Scotland to stop Brits feeling British. That in itself shouldn’t stop people from voting Yes but, realistically, it will.

A separate argument is that David Cameron is risking the unionist side’s strongest card in the independence referendum, namely the UK’s influence across the continent and wider world. Barack Obama is keen for the UK to stay inside the EU, Angela Merkel has already voiced her objections to the speech delivered today and Carl Bildt (Sweden’s foreign minister) warned Cameron against a “28-speed Europe”, reminding the PM of the need for each members to progress together. Further frustration with the UK’s lamentable attitude could lead to overtures towards an independent Scotland and the undermining of Cameron’s current position of one of the ‘big 3 in Europe’ as a result.

A neutered British bulldog would make EU round tables much more palatable for continental countries post-2014. Scotland would just be happy to be there, nodding matters through and wagging its tail excitedly, not that that is necessarily a bad thing.

Further to this, the considerable anti-EU bloc in England may judge that they would have a great chance of success in the 2017 referendum if Scotland didn’t get to take part in it. Donations and resources going into the Better Together campaign could dry up if this philosophy takes hold. If the choice for UKIP sympathisers (of which there are clearly many) was between leaving the EU or keeping the UK together, a fair few would opt for the former.

Personally for me, one of the most interesting aspects of Cameron’s speech, and highlighted at today’s PMQs, was the absence of any real vision from Ed Miliband. The Labour leader seems stuck between a largely Eurosceptic public and the need to differentiate from the position that the Prime Minister is taking. This is unfortunate for Ed as (1) he would not seek to take the UK out of EU save for the most remarkable of circumstances and (2) if we were in the run up to a general election, Ed would be promising precisely what Cameron is. Labour and the Tories read the same polls, they operate in the same narrow centre ground and the difference between their respective party Governments is not very much.

The choice in 2014 is becoming clearer, you can either vote for an independent Scotland that will likely seek to be a proactive and enthusiastic European team player or you can vote to be part of a UK which remains on the backfoot regarding all things EU, if it even remains a member at all.

Hollow lies the head that wears a weightless Crown

Jan 21

Posted by Aidan in Constitution, Democracy, Governance, Holyrood, Ideology, Westminster | 17 Comments

One of the long standing arguments against British Republicanism (and, by extension, Scottish Republicanism in a post-Independence Scotland on the current prospectus) is that the monarch has no actual power.

To quickly deal with a few other arguments:

  • Nobody actually comes to the UK to see the Queen, she isn’t publicly accessible at Buckingham Palace. We could use it for other things, like housing the homeless.
  • Yes, it will mean that we need to come to an accommodation about the current Crown estates and other assets. That’s ok. They didn’t earn them. Those assets were acquired illegitimately through violently undemocratic means. There’s a national debt somebody mentioned we have to deal with and surely it’s better to appropriate unearned wealth that should be held for the nation from the ultra-rich rather than punish the least well off and ruin the economy?
  • The head of state being head of an established national church  is clearly problematic in a multi-religious nation, never mind the rise of secularism, agnosticism and atheism .
  • Yes, the Queen is very old and does a lot of public engagements. So what?

Leaving aside those and other arguments against a constitutional monarchy, such as the inherent injustice and preservation of unearned privilege, the absence of real power has always been one of the central arguments on the pro-monarchy side. It is an argument which is now demonstrably false. A series of stories in the Guardian have exposed that, far from the legally inert and ceremonial role the Queen and her heirs and successors are said to enjoy since  the mid 70’s (between the Australian constitutional crisis and the rather murky goings on around Alec Douglas-Home she played a role in appointing the executive up until then), the monarchy has clearly continued to play some sort of active part in government legislation and policy up until… errr… now.

The “oh, but they don’t really do anything, it’s purely ceremonial” argument prioritises the admittedly useful political and legal fiction of the dignified part of government over the varied and often unclear, vague and nebulous alternatives presented. Admittedly most of the alternatives have drawbacks: an effective President either elected or selected by lot undermines the supposed legitimacy of the Prime Minister (those of an avowedly Nationalist bent can substitute First there and carry on regardless);  a Prime/First Minister accountable to no one save the legislature they control by definition may grow over mighty; a ceremonial President changes little in practice except the abolition of the hereditary principle although I’d argue that this would be worth the candle in and of itself.

The fact the monarchy does do things, and apparently does so with notable frequency and vigour, rather torpedoes that argument for inertia.

However, the current situation has by and large served us well. An elected President, on either the Franco-American or German-Italian models, would fundamentally change the way the country works. One selected by lot, while appealing to my Erisian sensibilities, doesn’t really change much. And it is actually quite useful to have a Crown which, in the idealistic conception advanced by constitutional monarchists, acts as a proxy for the best interests of the people.

Those who protect us from threats mundanely domestic and exotically foreign do so in the name of Her Majesty. The civil servants and elected members who write the laws and the police officers, tax inspectors, lawyers, judges and prison officers who enforce them serve the Crown. They do these things not in the name of the government of the day, although obviously they are accountable to them to a greater or lesser extent.

One of the things that being a programmer has taught me is that when you have a functioning system, and you don’t want to disrupt your existing users unnecessarily, small incremental improvements are better than rewriting from scratch. Given that the Royalist argument that the monarchy doesn’t actually play a role in the government is clearly untrue (and disregarding the counter argument that who cares, they theoretically could and that’s not ok) but removing them would mean unpicking some fairly useful conventions a simple solution occurs to me.

Keep the crown, dispense with the wearer.

If the monarchy doesn’t play a (fundamentally undemocratic) part in government that won’t affect things. If she does play an undemocratic part in government removing her is a clear win. She does, her heirs and successors will. Time to be rid.

A constitutional: two steps forward and one to the side

Jan 17

Posted by James in Constitution | 21 Comments

Curate's EggThe question of an independent Scotland’s constitution is being finally discussed by the SNP – as opposed merely to the “constitutional question”, i.e. simply whether we should choose independence. The First Minister, in a speech yesterday, even noted that “since no single party or individual has a monopoly on good ideas; all parties, and all individuals, will be encouraged to contribute“. This is major progress on the previous position, which was that the dire constitution written by the late Professor McCormick for the SNP would be what we’d use.

A better constitution is one of the key reasons for independence, for me. Westminster’s uncodified structures lack many key protections for individuals, they’re opaque and impossible for anyone outside Parliament itself to modify, and they say nothing about any aspirations or values that ideally should be associated with the British state. And the nature of that Scottish constitution is vital. It’s not enough merely to be an independent state: it’s time to be a better state as well as a better nation. Crucially, as the First Minister accepts, such a constitution “should enshrine the people’s sovereignty“, not Parliament’s.

Although this is a very welcome shift, there are still two key problems with it.

First, some of the content he proposes is policy. This is a category mistake: constitutions should be the rules for governing a state and protections for individuals and groups against majoritarianism. Like Salmond, I am against illegal wars, nuclear weapons, homelessness, and access to education being based on means rather than ability. But those are policy positions that should be determined by the voters in post-indy general elections, not enshrined into a constitution as sacrosanct. The Tories (and presumably Labour and the Lib Dems, if the latter still exist by then) will go into any 2016 election for an independent Scottish parliament backing the retention of Trident. I think they’re wrong, but if a majority of Scots agree with them, the weapons should stay. We can’t write a document that makes a legitimate position like that unconstitutional. I note here that Green policy also supports this position on nukes, incidentally, in case anyone thinks I always just parrot the party line.

Second, the timing. The Scottish public still won’t know anything about that constitution before they vote in October 2014. Will they genuinely be sovereign in that new Scotland? It’s not clear. And it doesn’t need to be like that. Two years before the 1997 referendum, the Scottish Constitutional Convention had, through a pretty open process, agreed what a devolved Holyrood would look like. The contents of the poke were clear. Over the next 21 months the entire Yes campaign could be transformed by a similar process. Meetings around the country, debates about vision and democracy and values, not just endless sniping about the economic costs and benefits of the process (which are broadly unknowable anyway).

The alternative to such a process is not only unreliable and uninspiring, it’s also deeply problematic. On what basis would the institutions of an independent Scotland operate during the long hiatus between a putative Yes vote and the ratification of a proper constitution? What bad habits might become ingrained? Do we really want a second referendum once it’s written rather than one clear vote on a particular model of independence? (there are advantages to a second process, I accept, not least that a menu of options could be more easily offered, Icelandic-style)

Still, without wishing to sound like the curate above, this speech remains substantial progress. The actual constitution is on the table, and there’s still time for the Yes campaign to take the next essential step. Put the people in charge, and then let the people decide.