Nicola Sturgeon is absolutely right to demand a place in Brexit TV debate

Cut this article out and get it framed. It is not often that you’ll see a Unionist like me write the words “Nicola Sturgeon is right.” This is one of those rare occasions.

The SNP leader is demanding that she be included in the mooted live televised debate on  Theresa May’s Brexit deal. The government is refusing to consider SNP involvement, which is bound to lead to the SNP going – rightly, surely – to the courts and the regulators. They will say that airing a primetime televised debate advertising the positions of the two major parties, without allowing other parties with MPs and representation in Westminster and the devolved institutions an equal say, fails the test on balance and fairness to which broadcasters are supposed to be committed.

A debate featuring just the Labour and Tory leaders would be a nonsense. There are myriad views on Brexit and the deal in the country and in parliament, and a range of positions and possible outcomes that viewers should see aired if it is decreed that there should be a TV debate. Who would represent the let’s get ready for no deal view? Who would be arguing for a second referendum and Remain? May v Corbyn is only half the story.

Number 10 is having none of it. It tried to slap down Sturgeon today, and in the process illustrated that in Westminster and Whitehall there is still insufficient understanding of how much has changed since devolution was introduced twenty years ago.

A Number 10 spokesman said somewhat haughtily: “Between the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition, those two parties represent roughly nine in 10 MPs who currently sit in the House. The PM has arrived at a deal that she believes delivers on the vote of the referendum, protects jobs, protects security, also ensures higher environmental standards, protections for workers and a range of other things that the leader of the opposition has professed too be very interested in. She believes it is his responsibility to set out, if he is going to vote against it, why. The meaningful vote on 11 December is a vote amongst MPs who sit in the House of Commons and the last time I looked Nicola Sturgeon is not included in that description.”

Oh dear.

The SNP has MPs – 35 of them. They are the third largest party in the Commons, and potentially pivotal players in votes on Brexit, especially if a Norway-style compromise deal comes into play. Sturgeon is right that her MPs and voters should have a voice. Presenting this – for the benefit of Theresa May – as purely a binary choice, this deal or nothing else, is misleading.

The government on this broadcasting row seems to have no concept of what it is up against either. The well-resourced SNP – as I pointed out yesterday on Reaction – has been fighting these court cases on debates and PPBs for a quarter of century. The SNP will not be the only ones with a case this time. The other parties, such as the DUP and the Lib Dems, even Sinn Fein, will seek to be involved in a TV debate. The resulting legal wrangle is why, I think, the debate will not happen in the end. But Nicola Sturgeon is dead right, for once. Law of averages. It had to happen eventually.