The Silence Of The Lamont
Alert readers will have noticed that we gave up on maintaining our Scottish media appearance log a while back. With pressures of work and a shortage of help, it was just too much to keep up with by ourselves, requiring hours of monitoring every day even just for the “big three” of Good Morning Scotland, Scotland Tonight and Newsnight Scotland, let alone shows like Call Kaye or anything on commercial radio.
However, we did continue to record appearances for quite a while after our last report, so it seemed remiss not to at least compile the stats to that point, which covered the first five months of 2012. The figures for January 1st to May 31st are as noted below.
14 APPEARANCES
Nicola Sturgeon (SNP)
13 APPEARANCES
Anas Sarwar (LAB)
11 APPEARANCES
Ruth Davidson (CON)
Willie Rennie (LIB)
Patrick Harvie (GRN)
9 APPEARANCES
John Swinney (SNP)
Michael Moore (LIB)
7 APPEARANCES
Alex Salmond (SNP)
Stewart Hosie (SNP)
6 APPEARANCES
Ken Macintosh (LAB)
Johann Lamont (LAB)
5 APPEARANCES
Humza Yousaf (SNP)
Margaret Curran (LAB)
4 APPEARANCES
Cathy Jamieson (LAB)
Shona Robison (SNP)
Willie Bain (LAB)
Derek Mackay (SNP)
3 APPEARANCES
Linda Fabiani (SNP)
Kezia Dugdale (LAB)
Jeremy Purvis (LIB)
Richard Lochhead (SNP)
Lewis Macdonald (LAB)
Stewart Maxwell (SNP)
Douglas Alexander (LAB)
Christine Grahame (SNP)
Hugh Henry (LAB)
Jim Wallace (LIB)
(E&OE. Politicians making fewer than three appearances are not listed.)
So we see that (as for the first quarter) over the entire monitoring period Johann Lamont appeared less often on TV and radio than any other party leader in Scotland – even the First Minister, who has the excuse of a rather busier schedule on account of having a country to run. She appeared fewer than half as many times as her own “deputy” Anas Sarwar, and only fractionally over half as many times as Ruth Davidson, Willie Rennie and Patrick Harvie.
Of course, the reasons for that have become increasingly clear in recent days. But it’s still a startling level of silence from the leader of the Holyrood opposition. It’ll be interesting to see if the frequency of her visits to the studios increases or decreases in the wake of Scottish Labour’s night of the long knives.
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APPENDIX
Female politicians represented 33% of appearances in our sample, fractionally below their 35% share of MSPs. The pro-independence parties got 46% of slots compared to 54% for the anti-independence parties, despite commanding a comfortable majority of seats, and the Conservatives were the most under-represented party, with far fewer appearances (7%) than the Lib Dems (16%) and the same as the Greens (7%) despite having more than twice as many seats as the other two put together. (Indeed, Ruth Davidson was the only Tory who was seen more than twice in the five-month period.)
Labour were slightly over-represented with 31% of places for their 29% of MSPs, and the SNP substantially under-represented at 39% of appearances for their 53% of seats.
Johan Lamont literally “puts in an appearance” in today’s online coveage of the GMS debate about the Labour meltdown in Scotland. Of course BBC Scotland has gone with the much nicer angle and headline of “Scottish independence: Is Scottish Labour bouncing back?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-19622804
Here’s Scottish Labour’s official spin doctor, Magnus Gardham, trying to put a positive sheen on that Smyth boy quitting his post as general secretary: http://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/political-news/lamont-tightens-her-grip-on-scottish-labour.18916810
It’s quite sickening, as was his appearance on Scotland Tonight last night. The guy is completely clueless, and has completely wrecked the Herald as a serious newspaper. Even the Scotsman seems more balanced these days.
Oh, and I notice the most featured politician from each party is either the leader (Davidson, Rennie and Harvie) or the deputy leader (Sturgeon and Sawar). As you say, the First Minister can hardly be expected to be popping into TV studios every five minutes (in fact we’d be criticising him if he did), so this is exactly the kind of thing a deputy would be doing – deputising for their leader.
I’d love to know what Lamont’s excuse is for leaving Sawar to deputise for her. Of course, we all know the real reason is that Sawar is the real Scottish Labour leader – which is a shame, because he’s a slimey little toad.
Maybe Lamont has been told by her spin Dr’s to keep out of the media as she has an adverse affect on Labour. A stealth leader.
I think you have all got it wrong folks, the main reason Lamont does not go on TV is the damned presenters ask questions for which she does not have a script and that is not fair. How the hell do you expect any leader of a labour party to answer questions without a prepared script, I mean look how good she was in the infamous new forth road bridge FM’s question time incident. Regardless of the answers our First Minster gave about the contract and steel requirments for the new bridge she was able to carryon regardless down that deep deep very deep hole of stupidity, and all because she had a prepared script. So there.
A little OT but have a little look at labour hame site, Mr Smart & Mr Ruddy are back on with their own version of “truth or dare”.
It’s odd that they’d pick Lamont as a leader if they were only going to hide her out of sight. If they were smart enough to see she was poison then you’d think they’d have chosen someone more suitable in the first place.
“Appleby”, ah but, remember her other main asset was doing what London says, that outweigh’s everything else.
It’s difficult to see what the rationale was behind making her leader. I use the term rationale loosely.
My own thought (not original I see, pace Davy) is that they wanted someone that would just toe/parrot the party line – anyone with more ability might have had ideas of their own and go off-message and not follow ‘the plan’ (if there is one) for Labour hegemony in these isles.
“If they were smart enough to see she was poison then you’d think they’d have chosen someone more suitable in the first place.”
From which options, though?
So you’re saying they didn’t have options and also weren’t smart enough to see she’d be a problem anyway? I think that sums it up!
The reason Lamont was ‘chosen’ to front the Labour Party in Scotland was, in my opinion, to reinforce the ‘pretendy wee parliament’ image in the run up to the referendum
They have attempted to polarise the debate into an Alex Salmond personality contest, where they want to reinforce their ‘one party state/dictatorship’ mantra on one hand, whilst showing the alternatives (the current Holyrood unionist cabal) as being incapable of competent government in Scotland
It spreads fear amongst those who dont like Alex Salmond by forcing them to ask the question, ‘what’s the alternative if I vote for separation?’
The politics of despair….
What about our good freind councillor terry Kelly, surely a man worthy of a promotion for his tireless comedy work.
Their obsession with AS has blinded them to the fact that there are plenty of other highly capable people in the SNP. Appointing Nicola Sturgeon to the Referendum brief will turn out to be a masterstroke as Labour’s strategy of making it a personal campaign against the supposed megalomania of ‘King-Eck’ falls flat.
Rev Stu. From which options, though?
I imagine Malcolm Chisholm might not have been overly keen on the ‘top’ (ahem) job. Although Ed would have never let that happen anyway as Malcolm has his own opinions on things; that’s considered dangerous for a Labour party politician.
Interestingly, Malcolm, like Dennis Canavan, left the ‘big boys parliament’ for the one they considered more important?
Labour’s obsession with Alex Salmond i, in my view, a very simple concept to understand.
Labour have NO policies and they are the Tories “front men” in Scotland for the union but have NO arguments FOR the union. As a result of these failings they must find something to help them keep face with the electorate, hence the personality attacks on A.S. The unfortunate thing for Labour with this line of attack is the almost immediate comparison between A.S. and Lamont. As soon as anyone does this they see the benefits of having A.S. as First Minister of Scotland (Independent or otherwise) doing an excellent job and Lamont a wee spokesperson for London who, apparently, has no concept of doing what is RIGHT for Scotland but would rather put Scotland and her people down as per her instructions from London.
Lamont got the job because both of the other leadership candidates were clear that Labour needed to change quite dramatically, and that’s the thing that they’re least willing to contemplate.
….and some in Labour say that Anas Sarwar is being groomed to take over from Lamont in the run up to the 2016 Holyrood election.
Of course, can we be sure that she did win, as the voting figures have never been released
They’ll be released when she gives her opinion on whether or not we should keep Trident. Probably.
I am told she whispered her opinion on Trident into a box, sealed it and buried it on an island beyond the eighth sea
It is not just a Labour party problem. None of the Westminster parties can effectively devolve their Scottish branches.
But conversely the SNP seem to do a good job of maintaining a Holyrood/Westminster operation.