BBC Question Time & Britain unquiet grave

 

Readers' editor Chris Elliot had a piece in the Guardian this week on Getting to grips with devolution. It reads in part, quoting an irate readership:

"The assumption that "government" initiatives apply to every country in the UK, no matter what the issue, is a source of endless frustration and resentment for readers, particularly those who live in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

Another reader writes: "Your writers and editors have not come to terms with devolution to Wales and Scotland and the restoration of Stormont." Instead of journalists making a gradual adjustment, he adds, "there is a steady deterioration." For example, he said, recent stories about Simon Schama advising schools on narrative history, children in primary schools not achieving appropriate progress in maths and English, and GPs holding budgets all seem to apply only to England – yet nowhere in the stories is this stated.

This omission, he says, amounts to misinformation, and as such is not only potentially damaging to democracy but also to the reputation of the newspaper.

He says: "If you … report a health, education or social services story from anywhere other than England, the relevant minister is styled 'the Welsh health minister' etc. Perhaps it would concentrate the minds of your journalists if Westminster ministers were routinely styled 'the English education minister'."

Although I'm not the author of any of these remonstrating epistles, I certainly enter into their spirit. This is clearly not an issue for the Guardian alone, but fundamentally about how British politics is imagined, how its polyphonies are or are not represented and understood, what viewpoints and privileged, emphasised, lent dignity or undermined. A few palacating, exculpating remarks tend to be made about the complexities of devolution, suggesting that we'll get accurate reporting tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, once all of the bemusing details have coagulated into common sense in the media's collective brain. Yet as one reader suggests, observing how broadcasters comport themselves more than a decade on from the passage of the Scotland Act, there seems to be little evidence of a slow acquisition of devolution competence and devolution confidence. Indeed we'd be hoodwinking ourselves if we imagined this is simply a matter of technical expertise and slow-learning journalistic shallowpates.

This piece proves surprisingly apt in the context of last night's BBC Question Time, conducted from Glasgow. Devolution may have said the last rites over the unitary British state, but the Corporation seem intent on damning the detail, damning the difference, and using vehicles such as Question Time to deny the death rattle and insist on the continuing vitality of a United Kingdom which has been consigned to its institutional and political grave. In her piece on the programme this morning, Joan McAlpine styled this "engineered cohesion". Since it is almost Halloween weekend, when rag-torn spectres walk and graves are unquiet - I prefer a much more ghoulish comparison. It is necromancy, cadaver broadcasting, which attempts to reanimate the spent life-force of a political past which is no longer relevant or interesting. While Dimbleby may have directed the sorcery, as ever he is ably assisted by the chanting band of haughty old jingoists, opinionated bigots and Westminster chauvinists who dominate the metropolitan broadcasting spaces and enjoy privileged access to British telly and press.

The Scottish blogosphere has been very much on form in its discussion of what transpired in the studio. James Kelly points out that after Dimbleby had clamped down on Nicola Sturgeon's brief reference to fiscal autonomy in the context of the Westminster cuts agenda with the phrase - "We may be in Glasgow, but Question Time goes out to the whole United Kingdom" - the panel had already spent...

" ... the first fifteen minutes of tonight's edition of Question Time - broadcast from Glasgow, remember - taken up with a discussion about a remark made by the Mayor of London, in his capacity as Mayor of London. And yet Dimbleby still couldn't see the irony of chiding Sturgeon for spending just a few seconds talking about a 'non-national' issue later in the programme. "

This is so obviously rich, so obviously ridiculously hypocritical that we ought to pause, just a moment to ask the interesting, patience-trying question - just how does the distinction make sense to Dimbleby and his fellows? How can he possibly fail to notice the disparity? No nationalist himself, Alex Massie teases out the premise - but sees the issue more in terms of the parochialism of the metropolitan "centre" towards the rest of the country per se. While Scotland may feel particularly stung by this attitude, Massie contends that the issue can and ought to be framed in far wider terms:

"This is not a Scotland vs England affair; rather it reflects a presumption that while it is taken for granted that viewers in the rest of Britain should be interested in discussions about tube strikes in London or the next round of Boris vs Ken, matters of more local interest in Glasgow or Manchester or Cardiff cannot be expected to interest the wider audience."

For me, Gerry Hassan puts it best and suggests the most effective exorcism.

"Then there is the issue of the nature of the UK and Scotland’s voice. I don’t think it is possible for the UK media, political class and elite opinion to develop a nuanced, subtle, informed understanding of the UK; it just isn’t going to happen; they believe that their bunker-like Westminster mentality is a rich, pluralist, cosmopolitan view of the world, unsullied by the unreconstructed lumpenproletariat who live out in the sticks.

Change can only come from without. That requires taking action, and in Scotland’s case it means creating our own media spaces to develop our national conversations and debate. Maybe the slow hollowing out of the mainstream will make enough of us realise that we have to show initiative, take some power and create our own alternatives."