THERE were just 14 people watching the Chancellor’s livestream at one point during his Scottish visit this morning.
Scotland’s political journalists poked fun at Rishi Sunak – and themselves – as they noted that they were probably the only people who bothered to tune in live.
“Fourteen tired, bored journalists,” commented one journalist.
Another reporter noted that the Treasury move to have a Twitter livestream rather than a standard press conference on the Scotland visit was maybe not a solid decision, as the viewer count remained steadily under 100 for large chunks of the broadcast.
Torchuil Crichton of the Daily Record joked that Sunak was "competing with GB TV to reduce viewer inflation".
Photograph credit: @MrDanDonoghue
Sunak was broadcasting on streaming service Periscope as he asked Scottish tourism figures about the UK Government’s “Scottish plan for jobs”.
The 20-minute stream was largely a big Treasury love-in as Sunak prompted the business leaders to tell him how wonderful UK Government funding schemes are.
Despite the title of the panel, there was little talk of any upcoming “plan”. At one point the Chancellor just asked a distillery manager for “anecdotes” about his company’s history.
The Chancellor is in Scotland on what he is hoping will be a Union-boosting tour in which he can promote the “economic strength of the Union”.
But his trip comes after government data showed just 4000 young Scots have started jobs through the Westminster Kickstart scheme, which had pledged 250,000 positions across the UK.
The Sunday National also revealed at the weekend that less than 1% of a UK Government £1 billion funding scheme for start-ups went to Scottish firms during the pandemic.
READ MORE: Rishi Sunak urged to apologise to public during visit to Scotland today
Interestingly enough these topics didn’t come up during the Treasury’s short livestream, during which Sunak was the person setting the questions and overall agenda.
His government’s decision to cut Universal Credit by £20 in the coming months also wasn’t discussed, even though the move will “push thousands of people into crisis” according to Citizens Advice Scotland.
To be fair to Sunak, since the livestream ended a lot more people have tuned in to watch the neatly managed discussion – nearly 4000 by the time of writing.
Sunak will continue his Scottish visit today and is set to meet with more businesses in Fife and Glasgow.
We’ll see if he actually has to answer for any of his government’s failures as the day goes on.
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