So, everyone turned up for Question Time in the end. We expected no different. As far as we can ascertain, the view in the pro-independence community was that the SNP’s Angus Robertson acquitted himself well as the sole political representative of the Yes campaign, and it was interesting and welcome to see journalist Lesley Riddoch (who was also assured and compelling) actually nail her colours to the Yes mast too.

But what of the show itself? Were the fears of independence supporters justified, or did the BBC mount an impeccable exercise in impartiality? Let’s find out.

Firstly, we should passingly deal with the protestations of some of the more comical No-camp activists that the programme wasn’t primarily about independence. Numerous media reported that the BBC had billed it as an “independence special”, but we haven’t as yet located an original source of that quote. So instead here’s how much airtime the episode devoted to its discussion topics:

PRIVACY AND SURVEILLANCE: 15:47

INDEPENDENCE: 33:01

SYRIA: 7:28

That seems fairly clear. More than half the show’s total running time, and almost 50% more discussion time than all the other subjects put together. This was, empirically, a show chiefly about independence, so the line-up of panellists – four anti-independence politicians, one pro-independence and an ostensibly neutral journalist who in fact came out in favour – was indefensibly unbalanced.

Don’t take our biased word for that, though – it’s also the view of the neutral Electoral Reform Society of Scotland, whose former-Labour-councillor chief Willie Sullivan sent the BBC a strongly-worded complaint in advance of the show.

But what happened during those 33 minutes? We sat down with our stopwatch and checked the amount of speaking time given to each panellist, because such is our job.

ANGUS ROBERTSON: 5:44

ANAS SARWAR: 3:10

LESLEY RIDDOCH: 4:38

GEORGE GALLOWAY: 5:25

NIGEL FARAGE: 1:49

RUTH DAVIDSON: 3:10

TOTAL PRO-INDEPENDENCE: 10:22

TOTAL ANTI-INDEPENDENCE: 13:51

That’s slightly over one-third more airtime (33.6%) for anti-independence panellists. But the imbalance of the show didn’t just manifest itself in the cold numbers.

For example, a full minute of Angus Robertson’s time was taken up drawing attention to the disproportionate number of guests, and another minute was swallowed up in defending Alex Salmond’s comments on the protests against Nigel Farage in Edinburgh last month – which were neither organised nor supported by the SNP – during which time Robertson was constantly interrupted and harangued by Farage and Galloway in what was otherwise mostly a fairly civilised debate.

David Dimbleby defended it by saying the BBC had taken care to ensure that “on the independence issue, this audience is divided 50/50”, but Robertson missed the chance to retort “So why isn’t the panel?”, perhaps in order to get on with the rest of the show. And that’s where the real problem with participation lies for the Yes camp.

If one side in a debate has twice as many voices and a third more airtime, it will always be able to bombard the other side with so many questions, challenges and points that they can’t all possibly be dealt with. It’s a tactic we’ve highlighted many times on this site, describing it as the “swarm of wasps” strategy.

Time and again, Robertson’s comments were misrepresented or flat-out lied about without him having any chance to refute the claims. In Galloway’s first segment, for example, he attacked Robertson’s complaint about unbalanced representation as having been “on behalf of the SNP”, when Robertson had in fact spoken about the exclusion of the Greens and Liberal Democrats, as well as the broader independence movement. At no point had he demanded additional SNP representation.

Then, around 36 minutes into the show, Nigel Farage spoke of Scots “swapping your masters from Westminster to Brussels” if they voted for independence. (Apparently unaware that the UK is currently in the EU, and Scots are therefore already governed by Westminster AND Brussels.) Responding, Robertson referred to Farage’s term:

“A hundred years ago there really weren’t that many independent states in the world, or members of the United Nations. Now there’s over 200, and there is nobody going back and saying ‘I want to be run from the masters, or the form of governance we had in the past’.”

Extraordinarily, in response to this innocuous comment, Ruth Davidson piped up:

“I wanted to pick up on the pejorative terms Angus is using there about slaves and masters. I don’t feel that the UK is a master and I am a slave.”

Now, that’s a flat-out lie. Robertson had NOT used the word “slave”, nor implied that Scots were slaves. He’d simply refuted Farage’s point about Scotland swapping one “master” for another, in terms of nations voluntarily pooling sovereignty in certain respects. But – perhaps out of arguably misguided courtesy, or perhaps out of waiting to see if Davidson would answer David Dimbleby’s question about the democratic legitimacy of a party with one Scottish MP governing Scotland (she didn’t) – he didn’t butt in to correct the falsehood.

There were numerous other examples, and not restricted to Robertson. George Galloway was quite extraordinarily rude to Lesley Riddoch, shouting her down, accusing her of lying about statistics regarding millionaires in London, and astonishingly ranting that the economy of the UK’s south isn’t “overheated” in comparison to the northern half, despite the weight of evidence to the contrary.

One can always, of course, make the argument that the viewer is intelligent enough to spot all these things for themselves. But that’s not how human nature works. If you keep up an unending stream of untruths and they’re not immediately refuted, at least some of them will sink in.

In some ways, the strong, calm performances of Robertson and Riddoch last night were in fact counter-productive. In giving good accounts of themselves, they justify the dice being stacked against them. “Look,” the BBC will be able to say, “they could handle it, so it’s okay for us to always outnumber pro-independence voices by two to one (or more) and give them less time to speak.”

For as long as pro-independence campaigners are prepared to tolerate unequal treatment, they’ll continue to be treated unequally. That they’re practiced and adept at coping with it mitigates some of the damage caused by the media’s bias, but not all of it. We remain of the view that the Yes camp needs to take a stand on the issue, and sooner rather than later.