Scotsman Daily Bulletin Tuesday 12 March

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:08 Hello and welcome to the Scotsman Daily Bulletin for Tuesday. I'm Alan Young, I'm

00:12 Deputy Editor of the Scotsman and joined today by our political correspondent Rachel Emery to take

00:16 a look through some of the headlines. Hi Rachel. Morning. Let's have a look at the front page first.

00:23 We lead today on an extraordinary row over the picture released on Mother's Day

00:32 by the Prince and Princess of Wales. You all know the story by now but it was withdrawn by

00:41 major picture agencies on Sunday evening, then by the Press Association in the UK on Monday

00:49 morning and that led to the Princess releasing an extraordinary statement to apologise for altering

01:00 the image. We also carry on the front page there the latest from the, or the latest, the full

01:08 roundup from the Oscars. We have Fraser Brown's column looking back on a tough weekend in the Six

01:16 Nations for Scotland. We also launch our Food and Drink Awards today, full details in today's paper,

01:24 and the wing column there just to complete the roundup is around Scotland's hate crime law. You've

01:31 not heard of that for a while. It was passed something like four years ago and it's finally

01:36 going to come into force in April with fresh concerns being raised. But Rachel, looking ahead

01:45 to today now and Humza Yousaf is in London. Tell us what he's up to. Yes, he's been in London for

01:52 the past day or two and he's going to be there all day today as well. The biggest thing on the

01:57 bill for him today is a speech that he's making to the London School of Economics and in that speech

02:01 he's going to sort of focus on Brexit and Brexit's impact on the Scottish economy. So he's going to

02:06 say that both the Conservatives and Labour at Westminster are both in denial about how bad

02:12 Brexit has been for the economy in Scotland. He's also going to claim that around one point,

02:17 sorry, he's going to claim that public services are about £1.6 billion less well off because of

02:23 the impact of Brexit as well. So nothing particularly new from Humza Yousaf. We know this is his stance,

02:28 we know that he's pro-independence and pro-Europe as well, so that in itself isn't quite too dramatic

02:33 to think about. I think what's going to be interesting here today though is because it's a

02:37 general election year, it's probably going to be a pitch for that. He's probably going to be setting

02:41 out his party's pro-Europe, pro-independence stance to voters because we know that lots of

02:47 pro-independence voters are shifting to Labour, so perhaps he can use this speech to try and claw a

02:52 few of those voters back to the SNP. I was going to say as you were talking there, it does seem odd

03:00 to be talking about Brexit. It's obviously an issue that's been a headline for years and now

03:08 it's not going to change where we are, but the decision to focus on that topic in a speech in

03:18 London rather than in Scotland is really reminding voters of the damage as he sees it ahead of the

03:28 election. Yes, so if we look at the polling, we know that support for independence has remained

03:33 around the 50% mark, however support for the SNP has fallen, which suggests that lots of

03:39 pro-independence voters, so the SNP's core voter base, are no longer automatically going to vote

03:44 for the SNP. Instead they are looking to other people like Scottish Labour instead. So this is

03:50 probably an attempt to try and claw back that voter base that they've relied on so heavily for

03:55 the past decade or so, because before if you're pro-independence you just automatically were an

04:01 SNP voter. That might not be the case for this election because independence is no longer the

04:06 biggest priority for voters going to the ballot box. Interesting, thanks very much for that Rachel.

04:11 We'll keep a close eye on that speech in London. We'll have full coverage at scotsman.com. If you're

04:17 on the site please do subscribe if you can and then you will not miss a thing and if you're

04:23 writing about today as ever do pick up a copy of the paper. But from me and from Rachel it's bye for now.

04:30 Bye.