Episode 9 - Zara Kitson, Peter Arnott & Maurice Smith

This week’s Newsnet Radio podcast found our panel in fickle mood, picking over the implications of the Scottish elections, and looking ahead to another referendum, this time over Britain’s EU membership. Will our visits to the polls never end?

We have three regular contributors with chair Derek Bateman this week: playwright and author Peter Arnott, Green activist Zara Kitson, and journalist and documentary producer Maurice Smith. Zara was speaking amidst the disappointment of just failing to win a Scottish Parliamentary “list” seat for the Greens in Glasgow.

The quartet discussed the impact of Ruth Davidson’s supposed “Tory revival” in last week’s poll. Is it real, or did the Scottish Conservative leader simply manage to motivate a rump anti-SNP vote? What will the SNP do with their third successive term of office? Is the result terminal for Labour, or can they mount an unexpected revival after tumbling into third place? And would a Brexit vote enhance or diminish the chances of “IndyRef2”?

Thanks to your continued support, our election campaign podcasts will continue up to the EU referendum in June. Newsnet.scot is run by volunteers – no salaries or crowd-funders – and so your one off payments and subscriptions help greatly towards maintaining everything as well as funding occasional commissions.

Peter Arnott’s play Shall Roger Casement Hang? set in the aftermath of the Easter Rising will run at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, May 20-28
Maurice Smith is producer of Scotland’s First Oil Rush, a history of the West Lothian shale mining industry, which is broadcast on BBC Two Scotland on Tuesday May 17 at 9pm.