Manufacturing a mandate
by Ken Ferguson - 13-05-2010
Clearly taking a lead from Abraham Lincoln’s view that you can fool some of the people some of the time Scotland’s flat footed pro unionist media lobby have fired the opening shots in the defence of the Union jack.
Simply put the script is that by enticing the Liberal Democrats into a coalition with the Tories the Westminster coalition has waved a magic wand and legitimised minority London rule in Scotland.
The icing on this unlikely wedding cake, according to the unionists, is the installation of Inverness Lib Dem MP Danny Alexander to the largely ceremonial post of Secretary of State for Scotland.
Now of course the other part of Lincoln’s dictum about fooling the people concludes that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time and in that spirit it is worth taking a hard look at the parentage of this latest unionist “fact”.
The tale first surfaced from the pen of veteran political journalist (and unionist) Hamish Macdonell formerly of the increasingly right wing Scotsman now doyen of the on line Caledonian Mercury.
In a story headed “Lib Dems make Tories mandate problem disappear” he argues that minority rule is now entirely legitimate as between them the Tories and Lib Dems have more MPs than the SNP.
Quietly ignored is the real fact that debates about the lack of a Scottish Tory mandate—even in the Thatcher years—were never based on how many MPs the SNP has but in the policies supported by the voters.
On this basis the supposed “legitimacy” of the Westminster Coalition of Cuts looks pretty shaky given that it based on an alliance between the parties than came third ad fourth in voting share in the Scottish general election.
However clearly following the line of “don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story” Scotland’s overwhelmingly pro unionist media seized on Macdonell’s tale and quickly bolted arms and legs on to it.
Leading the pack was the “Scottish” subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation who ensured that the news of this key constitutional development was heavily featured in news bulletins including the flagship 6.30 TV news.
Underlining the importance that the BBC news gatherers gave the revelation was the decision to to deploy star journalist Jackie Bird to interview First Minister Salmond on the issue outside the Scottish Parliament.
Then to ensure that the story was given a spray paint of gravitas leading commentator and unionist Gerry Hassan was wheeled out to baptise this new truth.
By the time the viewers of Newsnight Scotland switched on at 11pm what started as piece online in the Mercury had been elevated to the level of a new constitutional doctrine and will now, undoubtedly, form a key part of the unionists version of contemporary Scotland.
More widely the importance of this manufactured tale is not that it confirms what we already know that Scotland’s media is almost entirely pro unionist but how it was assembled.
Any watcher of current affairs programmes or readers of the supposedly “heavy” newspapers cannot but be struck at the regularity of the appearance of a narrow band of the same half dozen “expert” commentators whose expertise is offered to us.
Of course it must be a pure coincidence that they are almost entirely unionists.
The truth is that Scotland’s political commentators breathe a unionist atmosphere and assume that Scottish membership of the increasingly decrepit United Kingdom is a natural law, rather like gravity.
In this closed small world they drink their sparkling water in the same bars, eat in the same restaurants and, of course, interview each other on the same programmes and columns.
The famous Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci described this process where rulers control the ideas put to people as creating a “hegemony” that is a consent in favour of the rulers over the ruled.
Less polite activists might think it could be called brainwashing but you can be certain that this episode is only the opening shots in a desperate unionist offensive to keep the Union Jack flying as the cuts axe falls.
At the end of the Thatcher era the utter revulsion of Scots with the Tories—still alive 20 years later—led to the creation of the Scottish Parliament which is about to have its limited powers exposed by the cuts hurricane about to strike jobs and services.
The spectre that is haunting all stripes of unionism is that the connection between United Kingdom membership and savage cuts will fuel he conclusion that the answer might just be an independent Scotland with powers to take another road more in tune with Scottish opinion.