A Minor Bump
Posted on May 13th, 2017
by Rab Bruce’s Spider
A recording of Ruth Davidson’s recent interview on BBC 5 Live has been doing the rounds on social media and is being referred to as a "Car Crash". If you haven’t heard it yet, it is worth listening to. The link is:
https://ayerightradio.wordpress.com/2017/05/12/ruth-davidson-car-crash-interview-radio-five-live/
Now, you can be forgiven for wondering what all the hype is about. In common with most experienced politicians, Ruth Davidson did not lose her cool, and did not get tangled up in mumbled responses. She restated questions in her own terms, she deflected and she simply avoided answering some of the trickier questions. So it wasn’t a Car Crash interview, but it was notable nonetheless; the reason being that it was one of the only times any BBC interviewer, or any journalist at all, had actually challenged Ruth Davidson with some searching questions. Pro-Indie politicians are subjected to intense grillings and constant interruptions during interviews, while Unionist politicians are generally permitted to simply relay their spin with little challenge. For once, we have heard Ruth Davidson actually being pressed. Superficially, she survived the ordeal, but some reactions to the interview from Unionist or neutral listeners have demonstrated that, for far too many people, how a politician speaks is more important than what they say. Ruth Davidson may have sounded a little rattled, but she came across as being determined to hold her ground on policy issues.
What makes this interview important – apart from the almost unique example of a challenge being made – is what she actually said. If you listen closely to her answers, she managed to misrepresent facts and contradict herself more than once. She also spouted Tory propaganda which wasn’t challenged by the otherwise excellent interviewer.
So what did she say? Quite a lot. Let’s begin with her relationship with Boris Johnson and her stance on the EU. In her amazing volte face, Ruth Davidson’s political image is that of a self-seeking opportunist. From vehemently opposing leaving the EU to the extent of virtually calling Johnson a liar, she is now an ardent Brexiteer. Her justification for this is that she has accepted the will of the people, even if that will was not expressed by her own constituents. In this, she may have a point, but she has clearly demonstrated that, for her, the UK is more important than the wishes of the people who elected her.
As for her desire to obtain the best possible deal on leaving the EU, this is empty rhetoric. The best deal the UK can obtain is to minimise the amount of money it pays to meet its existing obligations to the EU. Other than that, leaving means leaving, and we can’t pick and choose which parts of the EU we want to retain. The UK media may be pushing the "Best possible deal" line, but the EU politicians are virtually unanimous in their view that the UK will be leaving on terms which suit the EU.
But, to get back to Ruth Davidson, toeing the Party line is how many politicians behave, so let’s not dwell on this aspect of her behaviour. Suffice to say that she will be an avid supporter of whatever policy Theresa May’s Government comes up with next. Her personal beliefs won’t hamper her willingness to throw in her lot with her London masters.
As for the policies which were discussed in the interview, that’s where the contradictions lie. She supports the tory aim of reducing immigration to the tens of thousands, but simultaneously thinks Scotland should have more immigrants. She was careful to word this as a desire for a more equitable percentage of immigrants, and that’s because anyone with a moderate grasp of arithmetic would be able to point out that a larger percentage of a much smaller number is … well, smaller. One can only conclude that she holds this numerically challenged view because the needs of Scotland must be subservient to the wishes of Westminster.
Then she told us that the reason more immigrants do not come to Scotland is that Scotland is the highest taxed part of the UK. This is a serious misrepresentation of the facts, since it refers only to the income tax paid by a minority of the Scottish workforce. When you take into account other taxes, such as Council Tax, plus things like Tuition Fees and Prescription Charges which are taxes in all but name, Scotland is most definitely not the highest taxed part of the UK.
Later, though, she implied that the Scottish Government should increase Income Tax in order to mitigate the harm caused by Westminster policies, apparently having forgotten that, by her own logic, this would further reduce the number of immigrants Scotland needs.
Another contradiction was her view on Child Tax Credits being capped at two eligible children. Scotland would not need as much immigration if its own population increased. For this, we need more children, yet Tory policy is to make that financially more difficult for many families to contemplate. She then trotted out the usual Tory mantra of work being the best route out of poverty, completely ignoring the fact that the majority of people who claim Children’s Tax Credits are in working families. Several social studies have shown that work is not a route out of poverty because wages are so low that many people are living far too near the poverty line.
Which brings us to child poverty. Ruth Davidson asserted several times that UK child poverty is falling. I’ve not been able to locate any official statistics to confirm this one way or another, but we must not forget that the Tories recently adjusted the definition of poverty in order to lift many families above the official poverty line. Indeed, this article from the Guardian suggests that, until this Big Brother–style redefinition was made, child poverty in the UK was actually increasing.
So, while Davidson may not have lied in a technical sense, she was certainly being economical with the truth. Indeed, the IFS have predicted that child poverty will continue to increase as more Austerity cuts to Social Security bite.
Needless to say, the admitted rise in child poverty in Scotland is all the fault of the SNP. Davidson was eager to make this point, referring to the extensive new Welfare powers granted to the Scottish Government. Again, she omitted to mention that these new powers relate only to a small percentage of the total Welfare powers and that they have been allocated so recently that very little has been put in place. It’s as if, having graciously granted some limited powers, Westminster expects the Scottish Government to immediately wave a magic wand to dispel child poverty.
Then, when challenged on what she would do to address the issues, she came out with the usual waffle about improving Scotland’s economy. Again, this went unchallenged, but anyone with a passing knowledge of Scotland knows that all the major economic levers of power are reserved to Westminster. All the Scottish Government can do is tinker around the edges and fight the various fires lit by Westminster’s policy of de-industrialising Scotland so as to make us allegedly dependent on English largesse.
The main thing about this interview is that, while it wasn’t a car crash, it was certainly a minor bump and, to continue the analogy, some of the paintwork was scraped away to reveal what lay beneath. In that regard, for anyone who was paying attention to what she actually said, Ruth Davidson revealed that what lay beneath her veneer of political certainty was a mish-mash of contradictory statements based on misrepresentations of facts and, with her refusal to even utter the word, "rape" in relation to the discussion on the Rape Clause, she showed her complete lack of empathy with the sufferings of women who have experienced this trauma. Indeed, she was far more concerned with lumping it in with other "exceptional circumstances" and describing the mechanism of dealing with it than with demonstrating any compassion. This hard-hearted view was reinforced by her stated support for the Two-child Tax Credits Cap. As mentioned above, this is not only illogical from the point of view of boosting the population, it is driven solely by the ideology of the Austerity agenda which insists that the way to incentivise poor people is to take money away from them. This policy has failed on its own terms since, not only has seven years of Austerity failed to reduce the UK Deficit, it has emerged that many of the cuts cost more to administer than they save.
This interview remains important, but the car crash was a minor one, and Ruth had her Tory Ideological seatbelt fastened. In the eyes of many, she probably got away without too much damage, so what we need now is for more journalists and interviewers to challenge her and other Unionists and to highlight their contradictions. We’re not looking for bias; we’re looking for equal treatment, and this was the first time we’ve heard it. That’s simply not good enough.
