TODAY programme presenter Nick Robinson has revealed that he demanded the BBC make its coverage of the economics of independence less nuanced during the referendum campaign.
His comments feature in the new episode of Yes/No: Inside the Indyref, the new three-part BBC Scotland documentary about the 2014 vote, due to be broadcast on Tuesday.
It partly focuses on the fallout of a speech in January 2014, by Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, on the economics of currency unions.
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Speaking to the filmmakers, Alex Salmond, who was First Minister at the time, called it a “helpful” intervention for the Yes campaign, as it “clearly did not say the policy we were putting forward was impossible”.
“It said ‘in any currency union you concede a certain degree of sovereignty’, well we knew that. There were advantages as well as disadvantages.”
But in the programme Robinson makes a staggering attack on the BBC Scotland correspondent at the time, James Cook.
He says his colleague, who is now the chief news correspondent of The Nine, did not do “a very good job” of reporting Carney’s remarks.
Cook’s report of the governor’s speech on the BBC news channel, was about the “careful consideration” needed to be taken before entering a currency union.
Five hours later, after Robinson had taken over the story, the governor’s speech was a warning that Scotland could face dire economic consequences and end up like Greece.
Robinson tells the documentary: “Now I wasn’t sent to cover that story, but I remember sitting in my office in Westminster watching our five o’clock news bulletin and seeing this very nuanced piece.”
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He adds: “I wonder if he was really that subtle. Part of my job, part of the job of being political editor at the BBC, is decoding what people in public life said.
“Making it real for people, making it comprehensible. And frankly I don’t think we were doing a very good job at that.
“So when I saw the actual text of the governor of the Bank of England talking about ‘clear risks’ of sharing the pound, that’s what I tried to do on my blog, that’s why I talked myself on to the 10 o’clock news that night.”
Addressing the cameras that night, Robinson told viewers: “The two words used by the governor of the bank of England to describe the pound being shared between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK were ‘clear risks’ and the spectre was of a Eurozone crisis, a repeat of runs on the banks, a run on sovereign debt.
“In other words, the spectre of a Greece or a Portugal or a Spain.”
Salmond accused Robinson of misunderstanding the speech: “All of a sudden the governor’s speech had been reinterpreted as an outright assault on the idea of a sterling union between Scotland and England, which it hadn’t been and wasn’t.”
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Carney’s speech, which used the word “risk” 13 times, and the phrase “clear risk” once, led George Osborne to categorically rule out a currency union.
Not all Better Together politicians believed that worked, however.
Johann Lamont tells the programme: “It worked well in some places, and in other places I think people went wait a minute, think that’s unnecessarily abrupt.
“To say it in campaigning terms, it probably didn’t land until as well as people might have expected it to.”
Last year, Carney said it would be economically possible for an independent Scotland to have a currency union with the rest of the UK.
Elsewhere in the show, Mhairi Black claims she was attacked while campaigning during the 2014 vote, with a disgruntled Unionist throwing an unwrapped Bovril cube at her.
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