This TV review first appeared in The Andersonstown News
“In some ways it feels like” Jim Fitzpatrick says, pointing to the overhead helicopter, the smoke, the flags, the crowd. The ‘it’ referred to is Scotland, and the programme is SPOTLIGHT:Scotland and the Union (BBC).
Jim is here because the “shifting politics” of Scotland may have “huge implications for all of us on this side of the Irish Sea. He promises to talk to both sides.
Megan Gallagher is a Conservative, which she proudly tells us is “the strongest party to stop another referendum.” The SNP had promised that 2014’s independence referendum was a once-in-a-generation, and Megan figures that seven years is not a generation. Let things settle down a bit, Megan suggests.
In Dundee he talks to Lesley Riddoch who’s a journalist and is pro-SNP. She suggests that there people making fools of themselves “pretending there’s no mandate for an independence vote. “There’s more than a whiff of know-your-placeism about that”.
Ciaran Martin is a prof at Oxford University, and he figures Scotland and England are on a collision course. Rev Norman Hamilton figures the UK is like a stool with four legs.Take away one of those legs and the w hole stability of the stool is gone.
We see a mass of people objecting to the arrest of some immigrants. Even when we see Home Secretary Priti Patel declare that it is the government’s responsibility to remove “those with no right to be here”, the crowd grows and the men, with their solicitor, are released.
Dundee, we’re reminded, is the home not only of Desperate Dan (there’s a statue to him)and other comics chums, but of games development in IT form. But now that the UK has left the EU, Dundee is finding it harder to “get talent from Europe.”
In Glasgow, Jim discovers that there’s “always a touch of orange and green{. The Catholic vote traditionally went to Labour, but now it’s gone to the SNP and independence. The people who attend Ibrox and support Glasgow Rangers – guess what? – have allegiance to the Conservatives. Scenes of Rangers’ fans celebrating their club success brings chants of ‘We are the People!’
The SNP are “wary of bring dragged into disputed identities in NEI, or with Catalans and other emerging groups. They prefer to identify with those who have successfully navigated to independence, rather than those who are trying.
In Troon, Ayrshire, Jim meets Dr Phillipa Whitford, who believes – not unreasonably – on the need “to be in control of your own decisions.” She doesn’t see it as Scotland’s place to tell NI people what to do. The people of NI are looking to Scotland, not vice versa.
These are unsettling times for unionists in NI, Jim concludes. “In the next few years, events in Scotland may well. Have a major impact on events in NI”.
The programme was balanced, thoughtful and ultimately dull. If you’re going to do a whole programme on politics in Scotland, you surely can come up with less predictable conclusions than this. VBM
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