Friday night’s Rishi Sunak interview was more than just a reminder of the contemptable state of Scottish democracy with about 8,000 Scottish Tories about to vote in an election that will give us… Liz Truss as Prime Minister. It was also a reminder of the nature of the BBC’s coverage of the 2014 indyref, in which Andrew Neil was arguably the main figure.
Confrontational interviewer Andrew Neil has a reputation for putting politicians under pressure with tough machine gun questioning. Some, like Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, actually avoid it altogether and blank his public invitations.
As is journalistic convention, he takes an adversarial position opposite whatever politician he’s interviewing. Neil just turns it up a notch, trying to catch them out with machine gun questioning and abrupt subject changes, hoping to unsettle with an unknown statistic or two.
Naturally, as a former BBC politics shows presenter, the perception of fairness is important to him. That he is seen to treat all politicians the same way, regardless of his personal views. For example, Neil regularly bristles at people on twitter who make claims about how he voted in the Brexit referendum.
There is one big constitutional issue, though, where it appears that Neil is much more relaxed about people knowing his all too obvious personal views. Namely that he is strongly against Scottish independence.
In most of the Tory leader candidate interviews, they have been asked (briefly) about Scotland and a referendum. A pressing issue for Nats and Unionists alike given the repeated mandates the government has received.
Their stock answer about once in a generation votes would have made an easy, creakingly weak, target for Neil to dissect using the principles of democracy. Even if briefly, with a less interested uk wide audience in mind.
But not on Friday night. Neil chose to ignore the open goal entirely, in favour of questions about Sunaks wife and whether or not he had actually had working class friends when he was at school.
The interview demonstrated again why Andrew Neil should’ve been nowhere near the BBC’s indyref coverage. If they really value impartiality, that is. Some of you may remember which side got the soft ball questions and which side got the toughies and the interruptions. If you don’t, let’s just say Blair McDougall and Alistair Darling got more than their money’s worth from their tv licences.
He will present arguments against lowering and raising taxation depending on the interviewee but he won’t point out the flaws in the lazy ‘once in a generation’ excuse to block democratic processes. The fact he couldn’t bring himself to take the part of the Scottish government and voters says a lot.
Watch Andrew Neil ask the softest question in the history of political journalism outside North Korea (an inaccurate rant about the SNP as a question to a surprised Douglas Ross).
Tell us what you really think, Andrew:
