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Nick Robinson weighs in on the day the SNP launch their manifesto. As much as I quite like Nick and his oscillating speech patterns (which carry through into his weblog too), I find it frustrating he’s fallen for the derisory Labour campaign message that “A vote for the SNP is purely a vote for Independence”. Take a look at the comments (including one from me), and it seems many commentators are taking issue with this aspect of his coverage. I’ll try to look at this some more in my forthcoming “guest editorship” of the Scottish Roundup

So what is it about the national media and their focus on the single issue of independence? Any support I choose to give to the SNP is in spite of this particular policy and - I like to think - on a rounded, balanced, considered view of what they’re proposing. I was rather rabidly opposed to them a few weeks back, but by looking at the detail it’s clear they have on balance a set of policies that are proving attractive to me. Further compelled, for the constituency vote at least, given the margins by which the current Labour incumbent won his seat last time.

My central point is this: Take a look at any Labour supporter and you won’t find they support every one of their policies. I’m pretty certain there were a lot of Labour voters on the anti-war March, who disagree with PPP, or dislike Gordon Brown as a future leader. Much as with the Conservatives (please, somebody let me know what their national policies are), and the Liberals and any other party you care to mention, they don’t sign up to every policy, but support the party’s general aims and aspirations where they correspond with their own.

This is surely at the heart of party-politics, so why is it proving so different with the SNP for the national media? Nick Robinson as political editor at the BBC didn’t, as far as I can recall, attend the launch of any of the other manifestos. My suspicion is that this boils down to a wider sense of frustration, or concern, in the predominantly English-focused national media at the liberties we enjoy up here with a reasonable (bit still far from perfect) devolved parliament, plus of course that Gordon Brown harks from these parts, and such a drubbing in his home turf is cause for concern.

But anybody relying on the national media for a view on the elections would do well to remember that not everybody up here who is considering voting for the SNP supports this one particular policy. Scottish Labour might also want to consider that too when they come to review their negative, derisory and hopeless campaign.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 3:21 pm and is filed under Politics, Scotland, Scottish elections, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.