Salmond rages against "BBC machine"

Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond yesterday launched a broadside against the "BBC machine" for his party's exclusion from the televised prime ministerial debates.

The Scottish National Party has recently suffered a sharp fall in the Scottish polls, indicating that the party will fail to reach its target of 20 seats at the general election on May 6.

After being asked about the SNP's decline in support, Salmond pointed to the debates as a contributing factor, reports The Scotsman.

"I reckon we went into this election with 30% of the vote. The day before the first TV debate we were sitting on 28% and looking at our greatest ever showing in a Westminster election," he said.

"The debates have set us back, but we've now got a ground campaign going, because there's a groundswell of feeling in Scotland that the SNP and Scotland have been done down by being excluded from the broadcasts."

Salmond claimed that the SNP will now try to use the sense of injustice felt in Scotland against the "BBC machine" to its advantage.

"We feel if we can ride the wave of rage against the machine, rage against the BBC machine and the Westminster machine, then I think it might carry us a very, very long way in this election campaign," he said.

The SNP has waged a fierce campaign against Salmond's exclusion from the BBC's prime ministerial debate alongside Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

However, the party saw an appeal rejected by the BBC Trust and then failed in a legal bid at Edinburgh's Court of Session, meaning that the first debate went ahead without SNP involvement on April 29.

Salmond is upset at the upsurge of support for the Liberal Democrats following Clegg's strong showing at last week's BBC debate, along with the preceding editions on ITV1 and Sky News.

He believes that it is unfair for the Lib Dems to gain additional backing in Scotland from a campaigning platform which is unavailable to the SNP.

According to various polls, Conservative leader Cameron edged the final leaders' debate on BBC One, followed by Clegg in second and Brown in third.