The Scotsman Bulletin July 22 2024 #USA

The Scotsman

Scotsman head of news catches up with investigations correspondent Martyn McLaughlin on the latest in the news

Transcript

00:00Hello and welcome to the Daily Video Bulletin for this Monday. My name's Dale Miller. I'm

00:12Head of News at The Scotsman and I'm joined by our Investigations Correspondent Martin

00:17McLachlan. Martin, we've got a big story for you from the past 24 hours that I want to

00:23get into shortly, but we'll look at the front page of today's Scotsman firstly. And it was

00:29hard not to lead on Joe Biden. It came through soon before 7pm on Sunday night. The announcement

00:37that perhaps a lot of us have been expecting that he was quitting the White House race.

00:42He will not run for re-election. He gave his immediate backing endorsement to Kamala Harris,

00:48as did the Clintons, Bill and Hillary as well. There's more key figures within Democrat circles

00:56that have come out and backed Harris and her push to run for election throughout this

01:03morning. It is going to be a big ongoing development story, not in the least because the other

01:09key figure in the run for this election, Donald Trump, will be turning his position of attack

01:17towards whoever the new candidate will be. Just four months out from the election, but

01:22we will see Joe Biden stay in post until January of next year, which was something

01:29that raised a couple of eyebrows when he made the announcement on Sunday night as well.

01:34And we had the conclusion of the open as well. You can read the full coverage around that

01:41event at scotsman.com. Martin, you had a big story as well across the weekend, and we've

01:48got more coverage around that today. It's to do with a major power plant that is planned

01:55up for Aberdeenshire. Can you talk us through a little bit about this story?

02:00Yeah, that's right, Dale. There's an existing Peterhead power station, but for the past

02:05two years, there's been a planning application that's been live for a new facility, a new

02:09gas-powered power station with carbon capture storage facility. And that's going to really

02:16be an ongoing topic of discussion at a time when the issues of Scotland's energy security

02:23just transition are really to the fore in political circles. So there's a lot of interest

02:29in how this is going to be handled by John Swinney's administration. And my story really

02:35raised some questions about that. Friends of the Earth Scotland, through a series of quite

02:42in-depth FOIs, have identified various meetings between ministers and the developers, SSE

02:49and Equinor, which they say are prejudicial to the planning process. But more than that,

02:56they have identified at least 16 meetings between the developers and ministers and civil servants

03:02where the Scottish Government have no records at all. So it's 28 breaches of the ministerial

03:10code. That's the accusation from Friends of the Earth Scotland. The Scottish Government

03:14are going to look into that and handle it as they would any other complaint. But I think

03:18that the big issue here is the issue of perception and transparency. You know, you don't need me to

03:26tell you that the SNP administration has faced criticism in the past for a lack of transparency

03:31and the fact that there are 16 meetings where there are no records or only partial records

03:37certainly doesn't give the impression that this is an application that is being

03:42treated openly and transparently. And Martin, that's in the piece we've got up at scotsman.com

03:48following on from your first story as well. Opposition parties are sort of saying there's

03:52urgent answers that need to be given here by the Scottish Government. This issue of transparency,

03:58you know, again reared its head with the UK COVID inquiry earlier this year. We had

04:03key figures like Professor Jason Leitch saying deleting WhatsApp messages was a

04:08quote pre-bed ritual. There is a pattern here and it was interesting when the social attitude

04:15survey was published in the past couple of weeks that showed that public trust in the Scottish

04:20Government was at a record low. Does this just add to the picture, do you think, of that? And

04:26is this something if John Swinney wants to regain trust in his government he's going to have to do

04:31something about? I think so, I absolutely think so. We saw when Hamza Yousaf became First Minister

04:38one of his first promises was openness and transparency and I don't think that promise

04:43was upheld and John Swinney faces the same challenges. Ultimately you have to have these

04:49things if you want to win the trust of voters at the next Holyrood election. And like I say,

04:55even the perception that there is some prejudicial handling of such a major planning application

05:01and such an emotive controversial issue around fossil fuels, that's going to make things much

05:09more difficult for the SNP and it is in their interests to explain why these records are

05:15missing. On the one hand you have a pretty comprehensive record in the Scottish Lobbying

05:20Register of meetings that took place. These records were uploaded to the register by the

05:27private companies SSE and Equinor. On the other hand, the Scottish Government's ministerial

05:32engagements records show nothing. So one of these is comprehensive, the other one

05:39is piecemeal at best and it's unfortunate I think that it's the Scottish Government that's

05:46so wanton in their record keeping and it really has to change. And Martin, just going back to

05:53that Joe Biden news, you've written a lot about Donald Trump and his interests here in Scotland.

05:59I'm just keen to hear your view of where this leaves the election race now. Four months which

06:06on UK terms seems like an eternity. I mean when we had Rishi Sunak call the election,

06:12it virtually happened six weeks later. In American terms though, it's not very long

06:16for a new candidate which looks potentially likely to be Kamala Harris at the moment to come in

06:23and contest this election against Donald Trump. Does this development help or hinder Trump and

06:30help or hinder the Democrats do you think? It's entirely in the Democrats whether they

06:35seize the crisis and make it an opportunity or the crisis overwhelms them. It looks for the moment

06:42as if it's going to be effectively a coronation. None of the other big democratic heavyweights have

06:49put their name forward. It looks like it's going to be Kamala Harris. Whether that's the right

06:53thing, I don't really know because there's a lot of support for Kamala Harris, especially in

06:59her home state of California. But in the key swing states, we've seen polling where she's still

07:05behind Trump. The margin is slightly smaller than between Biden and Trump but nonetheless

07:13she still has her work cut out. So she's really going to have to unify the party and more

07:18importantly prove to voters that she is the legitimate option to prevent President Trump

07:26from regaining office. I think some of her party have billed this as a fight between

07:32the prosecutor and the felon and it's up to the American public whether they believe that.

07:39Because I think it is still Trump's to lose at the moment. We saw those scenes at the RNC where

07:45it was a cult atmosphere. There's incredible unity in the Republican party behind President

07:52Trump. So the Democrats really have their work cut out and there's not a day to lose.

07:58Martin, just highlighting that, Prosecutor V fell in comparison. If you want to go away and

08:04have a look at Kamala Harris' first promotional video for her campaign,

08:07it basically leverages that exact comparison. A clever bit of work that went up literally within

08:1430 minutes of Biden actually pulling out of the race. Martin, thanks very much for your time.

08:20You can read all of Martin's coverage around the Peterhead ministerial code issue at scotsman.com

08:27and follow us on Facebook X and Instagram and go out and buy a copy of the paper tomorrow. Thanks.

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