Article by Cllr Dick Cole first published in Cornish Guardian newspaper (13th September 2023)

BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions was in Cornwall on 1st September and the political debate took place at the Lostwithiel Community Centre. The four guests were the Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer (Bristol), Conservative MP John Glen (Salisbury), Labour MP Luke Pollard (Plymouth) and Alice Thomson, a columnist with the Times newspaper, who I understand lives in Devon.

Over the years, it has been the same story with the BBC’s Question Time television show. I think I am right in saying that this programme has been broadcast from Cornwall twice in the last decade and, on both occasions, there were no guests from Cornwall. Many people may remember the headlines from November 2018, when they were last to the west of the Tamar – “Anger at no-one Cornish on BBC Question Time filmed in Penzance.”

Representatives of Mebyon Kernow have never been invited onto Question Time, though to be fair to the Any Questions team, they let us on once. I had been pencilled to take part in a debate at St Endellion in July 2013, but the BBC took the decision to “adjust” the panel, as there were too many men on it. Their preference was for Roy Hattersley, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Philip Collins, who had previously written speeches for Tony Blair, rather than me. MK’s deputy leader, Cllr Loveday Jenkin, finally made it onto the show in Mousehole in October 2017.

Returning to the recent programme in Lostwithiel, the final question was about life-chances in Cornwall. It was good to hear some relevant points being made around social mobility and the need for proper “levelling up,” but the discussion seemed to be relentlessly about some amorphous south west. The need for devolution was even referenced with the Labour representative speaking about devolving “power and responsibility” to the regions. He was also specific about what he meant by “region;” he was not talking about Cornwall, but referring to “regions like the SW.”

I was extremely disappointed that none of the guests were from Cornwall. And what a contrast from the previous week, when Any Questions had been in Aberdeenshire. All of the participants were from Scotland – the leader of the SNP Group in Westminster Stephen Flynn, two members of the Scottish Parliament, the Conservative’s Rachael Hamilton and Labour’s Daniel Johnson, plus the former First Minister Alex Salmond, who is now the leader of the Alba Party.

What a shame that there was no-one on the panel to argue for a new democratic settlement for Cornwall.