Why should Alex Salmond

be caressed with a feather

duster by Paxo?

 

Tom Gallagher

 

I only managed to see Jeremy Paxman's notorious interview with Alex Salmond on BBC Newsnight at the weekend. By then it had elicited over 154 complaints to the BBC and one local analyst, who keeps a scorecard showing how Scotland's freedom journey is evaluated by Sassenachs and local unionist commentators, awarded nil points for a 'brutal' interview.
     I thought that Paxman's approach was unusual and effective. He tossed a number of curved balls at Salmond, unexpected and awkward questions, but with the manner of a forensic courtroom lawyer up against a smooth but slippery witness. This is Paxman and there was no tugging of the forelock in the presence of the mighty – the standard approach of French television to Gallic high-ups. The Zimbabwe parallel emerged naturally when the first minister ignored Paxman's claim that independence would be a house of cards because there was such a huge gap between revenue and outgoings.
     Lots of people are scrambling around trying to find the elusive artefacts of Britishness which will enable them to derail the nationalist juggernaut. It occurred to me that the mercurial and choleric Mr Paxman exemplified one of the strands that have defined Britishness in the eyes of the rest of the world. He speaks his mind without fear or favour. He operates out of a studio not far away from the old Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park which to unfree peoples used to be the symbol of true liberty of expression. In his encounters with the powerful and influential, he can usually be relied upon to be direct and disobliging. He shows his impatience with mealy-mouthed interviewees by puncturing their conceit and humbug.
     He personifies a rude and egalitarian trait in the British character that can be traced back a long way. Others have belonged to an awkward media squad which in Scotland sometimes seems to include just one K Roy: John Freeman whose series of frank television interviews in 'Face to Face' are still recalled; also Sir Robin Day and John Humphries, both accomplished interviewers. In Scotland, if Ludovic Kennedy was still practising his craft, the first minister might be on his guard, but I am not sure if anyone up here would dare to pursue a line of questioning which led to increasingly nervous chuckles from the FM in the face of Paxman's cheeky and unpredictable broadsides.

 

     Across the water in Ireland, they have their own Paxman. Most weekday evenings on TV3, veteran journalist Vincent Browne hosts a current affairs discussion programme. It provides the debate about distressed Ireland's awful economic predicament which is absent in its parliament, the Dail. He subjects all-comers from the political world to serious questions and at times withering invective. Viewers can't get enough of it and the government party knows it would suffer if it boycotted the programme.
     David Torrance wrote in SR last year about suddenly hearing the angry voice of the first minister at the other end of the phone while he was in central London. The journalist proceeded to be ticked off for delving too far into Alex Salmond's family background (and in my view discovering nothing very discreditable). I note that the author of a very fair-minded biography and someone who is a credit to political journalism in Scotland now pursues his trade in London though I am sure that Scotland is constantly on his mind.
     When the most powerful politician in the country complains to a biographer about an innocuous detail or when hundreds of his supporters mail the BBC indignant that an accomplished debater has been roughly handled, I find it hard to consider Scotland an egalitarian country. Instead lots of people desire a managed society where politicians are treated like Meissen china figures just as in France. It's a land which will never produce a Ludovic Kennedy or a Jeremy Paxman unless they become famous for their talents after taking the Torrance path and leaving Scotland.
     By the end of the testy conversation with Paxman, Alex Salmond was a slightly quavering Mr Happy who had laughed too often in an effort to parry his jabs. If Salmond had been able to dwell on just a few of his plans for the new Scotland that would make it 'a progressive beacon', then he could well have turned the tables on Jeremy Paxman. However, the lack of substance in his answers was plain to see: Paxman scored a palpable hit and he also probably got the reaction that he wanted.
     Too many Scots want to return to a bygone era where criticism of one's betters is totally frowned upon. I fear some in the SNP may be leading us to a kind of tartan 1950s. This is the decade when the journalist John Grigg had the temerity to compare the present queen with a 'priggish schoolgirl' because of her way of speaking. Outrage ensued and he was assaulted in public. If the queen is smart, she will request to keep her beloved Balmoral while passing the throne of Scotland to someone who will be known not as Mr A Salmond but as Alexander IV. The mood of this country is not egalitarian but emphatically regal. How can it be otherwise when a far-left pundit demands that a politician, well able to defend himself, be caressed with a feather duster by Jeremy Paxman?

 

Tom Gallagher is the author of 'The Illusion of Freedom: Scotland
Under Nationalism'