Bernard Ponsonby

Bernard Ponsonby is a Scottish broadcast journalist working on regional news and current affairs programming for STV. He joined the station in 1990 and was appointed political editor in 2000, following the retirement of longstanding political editor Fiona Ross.

Political career

Ponsonby stood for the Liberal Democrats – then styled as the "Democrats" – in the 1988 Glasgow Govan by-election, losing his deposit with a 4.1% share of the vote. Since the party had only recently formed after a merger between the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party, Ponsonby was the party's first ever candidate to stand in a parliamentary election.

For seven years, Ponsonby presented Scottish Television's political programme Platform. Currently, he reports and provides political commentary for all three editions of the station's flagship regional news programme, STV News at Six, in the North, East and West of Scotland. He has also contributed to the weekly political programme Politics Now, for which he became presenter in January 2009, until the programme's end in 2011. He now commentates on the replacement programme Scotland Tonight.