Author Archives

FAIR’S FAIR?: With bias, the devil is often in the detail. A sharp-eared listener noticed on his rather congested drive back from London to his home in County Durham that on Radio 4’s PM  BBC correspondents were doing some alleged ‘fact-checking’ in response to queries from listeners about aspects of EU operations. One wanted to know about the European Arrest Warrant. Now that’s a subject that has not figured much so far in the EU referendum debate, if at all – the last references to it on the BBC website via its own search engine are mainly from 2014, when David Cameron – in line with his usual posturing over Brussels – first suggested that the UK might withdraw from EAW arrangements and then a few months later, accepted without a murmur or a fight, all its  provisions. Since then, zip. So how did PM handle this?  Correspondent Norman Smith declared:

Well, the European Arrest Warrant is basically a scheme to enable villains to be picked up wherever they are in the EU, if they do a runner from one country to another, so if you have a villain in Paris who goes and mug someone and goes and steals their jewellery and then does a runner to London, the French gendarmerie can ring up the Old Bill and say, ‘Would you mind picking him up, putting him on a train back to Paris, and we’ll bung him in jug here.’ The problem with it, or perceived problem with it is the view that we’re very good and very diligent and very honest about kicking out foreign villains and everyone else isn’t so good at it. Actually, when you look at the figures, it seems to me to be fair’s fair, because, just looking at the figures here, between 2009 and 2016, we kicked out around 7,500 foreign villains and got back around 800 British villains, which is about 10% in comparison, which is roughly about what the UK is population is as a proportion of the whole EU. So, it seems to be, by and large, the European Arrest Warrant seems to be operating on a fairly fair basis.

So according to the BBC and Smith, fair’s fair, and that’s it.  No reference to concerns such as those expressed, for example, in this Daily Telegraph editorial, that Britons are being unfairly imprisoned abroad without due process by legal systems such as those in Bulgaria and Romania which are primitive and unfair. Instead, a simple focus on numbers which, according to Smith, showed that the UK has kicked out 7,500 EU-based villains since 2009 and in return have got 800 back – in line, according to Smith,  with what would be expected because the UK’s population is around one tenth of that of the EU.

Closer inspection suggests a very different interpretation is possible. Smith got his statistics from the National Crime Agency, and while he gave the basic figures for actual extraditions, he made no reference at all to another rather important statistic –  that in the fiscal year 2015/16 (presumably ending in April 2016, so bang up to date) there were a total of 14,279  requests for the extradition of Britons  from the other 27 EU countries, whereas the UK made only 241 requests. The UK population is around one twelfth (8%) of the total of 508m in EU countries, and yet the total number of EAW requests made by the UK was only one sixtieth of the EAW total.

Now of course, requests are not the same as actual extraditions, and the number of ‘surrenders’ (1,271 to the rest of the EU, 112 to the UK) was more closely in line with the EU/UK population ratio. But offset against that is that all of the 14,279 EAW requests coming to the UK have to be investigated and dealt with. The individuals involved are spoken to, investigated, and often put in great fear of ending up in foreign jails. The Daily Telegraph editorial indicated that at least £27m each year is being spent by the Home Office in processing applications. That’s likely to be the tip of the iceberg and is a hefty price to pay,

Another dimension here is that the NCA figures cover only UK/EU interactions under the EAW.  As with so many aspects of EU operations – which are shrouded in bureaucratic  obfuscation – research by News-watch has drawn a blank in finding up-to-date figures for EU-wide statistics. The newest figures available relate to 2009.  Then,  across the EU as a whole, 15,827 EAW extradition requests were made, and 4,431 were executed;  of that total, the UK made 220 requests and 80 were executed. The NCA figures for the same year are that EU countries made 3,826 requests for extradition from the UK, and 673 (c.20%)  of these were actually executed.  So put another way, almost a quarter of all extradition requests under the EAW were made to the UK. The UK, for its part made only 1.5% of EAW applications, around a third of which were successful.

All this is by necessity rather a complex analysis but it shows that Smith’s ‘fair’s fair’ claim is to put it mildly, open to debate. Britain spends millions enforcing the EAW.  Each extradition costs, if the Daily Telegraph figures are accurate, in the order of a minimum of quarter of a million pounds. The UK is bombarded by requests from other EU countries for EAW extraditions at a far higher level that can be accounted for by differences in population.  The UK does not accept the majority of these, but proportionately, far more UK citizens are extradited to the EU from the UK than are extradited from the EU to the UK.

What does this show? That in ‘fact checking’ mode, the BBC cannot be trusted, nor in its analysis of EU affairs, is it impartial.  Yet again, it erred on the anti-Brexit side. Norman Smith’s fault here may have been that he too hastily looked at the basic NCA statistics without properly examining the framework , controversies  and complexities of the EAW. But whatever the cause, he made sweeping conclusions that were highly simplistic and deeply misleading.

Transcript of Radio 4, ‘PM’ ‘News at Ten’ 17th May 2016, Listeners’ Questions, 5.52pm

EDDIE MAIR:      For a third week, we’re setting aside time in the programme to talk about the EU.  Not what pundits want to talk about, not what politicians want to talk about, but what PM listeners want to talk about.  You are still welcome to send us your question, and our assistant political editor, Norman Smith and our Europe correspondent Chris Morris will do their best.  Will start tonight with Alan Beamish, who asks about the European Arrest Warrant.  How many UK citizens have been arrested and extradited to other EU’s states, compared with citizens of other EU states extradited to the UK?  Norman Smith has the answer.

NORMAN SMITH:             Well, the European Arrest Warrant is basically a scheme to enable villains to be picked up wherever they are in the EU, if they do a runner from one country to another, so if you have a villain in Paris who goes and mug someone and goes and steals their jewellery and then does a runner to London, the French gendarmerie can ring up the Old Bill and say, ‘Would you mind picking him up, putting him on a train back to Paris, and we’ll bung him in jug here.’ The problem with it, or perceived problem with it is the view that we’re very good and very diligent and very honest about kicking out foreign villains and everyone else isn’t so good at it.  Actually, when you look at the figures, it seems to me to be fair’s fair, because, just looking at the figures here, between 2009 and 2016, we kicked out around 7,500 foreign villains and got back around 800 British villains, which is about 10% in comparison, which is roughly about what the UK is population is as a proportion of the whole EU.  So, it seems to be, by and large, the European Arrest Warrant seems to be operating on a fairly fair basis.

EM:        Liz Matthews says, can you please explain the difference between European Union, the European Commission and the European Council.  Chris Morris can help you.

CHRIS MORRIS: Basically, Liz, the European Union is the name given to the grouping or partnership of the 28 member states.  28 European countries including the UK that all belong to the EU.  The Commission and the Council are institutions that form part of the European Union and help to run it.  The Commission is like a civil service or an executive body, it proposes new legislation, it draws up the EU’s annual budget, and it manages and supervises EU funding.  At the top of the tree in the Commission are 28 national commissioners, one from each member state.  The Commission’s president is officially nominated by national leaders and then elected for a five-year period by the European Parliament.  Right now, the man in charge is Jean-Claude Juncker from Luxembourg.  The European Council is different.  It has its headquarters just across the street from the Commission, and the Council sets the overall direction and priorities of the EU.  It’s formed by the individual heads of government of the 28 member states, so when David Cameron goes to Brussels for what we tend to call an EU summit, in official language, that’s a meeting of the European Council.  Its president is elected for a 2½ year term by all those national leaders, and part of the role of the president of the Council is to represent the EU as a whole oversees.  The current president is the former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.  So, just to make it clear, if we vote to leave the EU, we’ll be leaving the European Commission and the European Council as well.  But not, sadly some might say, the Eurovision Song contest.

EM:        Titus Alexander says, ‘in the EU referendum debate, much is made of the cost of our EU membership, it would be interesting to put this in context with our membership of other global organisations, how many international bodies does the UK belong to, and what’s the cost in us participating in them?’  Norman Smith can help.

NS:         Well, the answer to this is we belong to an awful lot of international bodies, an awful, awful lot. And some of them cost a lot and some of them don’t cost very much at all.  So, if you look at something like the OECD, well, that costs us around £40 million a year, similarly, the World Health Organisation around £16 million a year. The UN – well, we contribute about £90 million to the UN’s regular budget each year, and a voluntary contribution of £2 billion goes towards the UN’s development and humanitarian operations.  How does that compare with our contribution to the EU? Well roughly we contribute about £18 billion a year, but as we know, we get an awful lot back in terms of our rebate and money that goes to various deprived parts of the UK, which means, in total, we probably contribute about £8 billion-£9 billion.  But I guess the difficulty with all this is your kind of comparing apples and pears, with the EU, clearly, we hope to get a lot out of our contribution to the EU in terms of access to the single market and that sort of thing, with contributions to the World Health Organisation and the UN, we’ll, we’re not really anticipating and getting much back, we’re trying to promote overseas aid and global development, so, the difficulty really is you’re comparing very, very different organisations.

Photo by Luke McKernan

BORDER TROUBLES?: On the BBC Weekend News this evening, the main item was hinged on that Vote Leave was wrong to suggest that the UK could not veto Turkey’s application to join the EU. At the end of the bulletin, reporter Chris Buckler presented a package which examined  whether border controls would be introduce between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Eire in the event of a UK exit from the EU.

In some respects senses there was ‘balance’ in that there were a mixture of concerns about what might happen. But Buckler was oddly unfocused and unclear in elements of what he told the audience and his main goal appeared to whip up the idea of trouble in store.

First, there was a major omission that affected the veracity of his entire package.  What he did not say was that  the current border arrangements between the UK (including Northern Ireland ) and Eire are nothing to do with the EU, and never have been .  They are based on a bilateral agreement between the Irish and British governments formulated under the title the CTA (Common Travel Area). The CTA stipulates that there is free movement between all parts of the UK and Eire. The arrangements have evolved considerably over time, but, in effect, have been in existence since Eire’s independent in 1923.

It is hard to understand why Buckler did not explain or mention this. Instead, he focused on that   there had been checkpoints on the Eire/NI border during the Irish troubles (presumably referring to the political and civil unrest that began in the 1960s and continued until 1998, though he did not say so) and added that ‘some are asking whether checkpoints would return if the UK was to vote to leave the EU’. The question here is why this would happen, and who was suggesting it would; Buckler’s narrative gave no clue. Such checkpoints on the border he was describing only existed because of security reasons linked to the political and civil unrest, the CTA free movement principles were not suspended.

Buckler then jumped to trade. He observed  that ‘some had suggested’ that the £1bn trade each week between Ireland and the UK would be affected adversely by Brexit. Was he claiming that problems would arise because of the new border checkpoints that he had imagined might be introduced?  He did not say, nor did he explain that most of the trade between Eire and the UK is not via border roads in Ireland.

His next point was another non sequitur: that towns along the Eire/Northern Ireland border had benefitted from ‘European peace money’. His example was a new sports centre where boxed Barry McGuigan trained. His statement was both disingenuous and misleading.  Yes, Northern Ireland and Eire have received from the EU (not ‘Europe’) millions from a specially established peace fund. Relevant here, however, is that the cash ultimately comes from the UK’s overall contribution to the EU and that the peace fund further relies on the UK government because elements of its contributions are dependent on match funding from national and local government, and from private enterprise.

Buckler concluded by acknowledging (again without mentioning the CTA) that concerns about immigration if Britain was outside the EU ‘some had suggested’  border controls and passports could be needed in future.  There was a vox pop from one woman who wanted such restrictions on ferries to stop terrorism, then from another female who thought the reintroduction of controls would be ‘completely insane.

He concluded:

Britain and Ireland have always sat apart from the rest of Europe geographically, but this referendum is about where the UK sits politically, and the final decision will make a difference across both islands.

The implication – from all that had gone before – was clearly that Brexit would lead to significant changes in the border arrangements, and the impact could be severely inconvenient and financially negative.  The spectre he had invoked was a return to the arrangements of the troubles, border checkpoints, restricted trade. The bias here can only be fully identified  through very careful fact-checking and examining alternative perspectives. Again the devil is in the detail.  Why did he not start from the premise that the long existence of the CTA suggested that free movement would continue?

Transcript of BBC1, Weekend News, EU Refrendum and Northern Ireland, 10.49pm

MISHAL HUSAIN:       What would next month’s EU referendum mean for Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK to have a land border with another European country? In the first of a series of reports hearing views from around the UK – our Ireland correspondent Chris Buckler has been travelling along that border. Chris?

CHRIS BUCKLER:              Mishal, I’m standing right at the border, not that there is much sign of it today. Of course, it was very different during the years of Northern Ireland’s troubles when there would have been checkpoints, often queues of cars. And Leave and Stay campaigners have been involved in a heated debate about what would happen if the UK were to leave the EU. Could it mean a return of checkpoints and the end of completely open roads? As it is, the easiest way of knowing whether you’re in the north or the south is by looking at the speed limit signs. In the Republic, they’re in kilometres per hour, in the North they’re in miles per hour. And I’ve been taking a journey along that border, and I should warn you my report does contain some flashing images. Fermanagh sits at the edge of the UK. There is a point in this land where Northern Ireland ends and the Republic begins. But could that invisible border soon mark the line where the UK meets the EU? What looks like a haphazard red line on that map is actually the border and on this one road, as you’re travelling down it, you move in and out of the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland several times. In fact, coming up here we’re just going back into Fermanagh, back into the UK. But during the violent years of Northern Ireland’s Troubles, there was huge security where the two countries met, and some are asking whether checkpoints would return if the UK was to vote to leave Europe.

ARLENE FOSTER MLA First Minister of Northern Ireland: We have such good relations now that we will be able to build on that, and I don’t foresee watchtowers going back in South Armagh, if that’s what the question is.

CB:        Nobody means watchtowers, but we need some kind of checkpoints, or something that says there’s a physical border there?

AF:         Well, as I say, there are borders all across Europe and those things will be negotiated if there is to be an Out vote.

CB:        Northern Ireland’s First Minister is a supporter of the Leave campaign. But other parties at Stormont are worried about the potential impact of an exit on the economy here, and the government in the Republic share some of those concerns. Approximately £1 billion of goods and services is traded between the UK and Ireland every week. Towns along this shared border have benefited from European peace money. It’s helped to build among other things this sports facility in Clones in County Monaghan. The town’s most famous son is former world boxing champion Barry McGuigan. But in the fight over Europe, he’s not sure which corner to be in.

BARRY McGUIGAN:        The south has benefited enormously from being part of Europe. I’m still relatively undecided about whether I now live in the UK or whether they should be part of Europe or not, and none of the politicians have convinced me, that’s the interesting thing. But my gut feeling tells me that the UK should be part of Europe.

CB:        Politically and practically, checkpoints on Irish roads might not be an option, but if Britain was outside of the EU and the Irish Republic within, migration controls might be necessary. Currently, you don’t need a passport to travel between these islands. But with modern security concerns, some have suggested that that could change.

VOX POP MALE:                            I think you should have to show passports regardless. You’re on a ferry, it could be anybody getting on this ferry. It could be terrorists getting on the ferry.

CB:        But other travellers, used to crossing seas and borders, don’t like the idea of new restrictions.

VOX POP FEMALE:          Where we live borders is completely . . . it’s completely insane, like again to re-establish a border.

CB:        Britain and Ireland have always sat apart from the rest of Europe geographically, but this referendum is about where the UK sits politically, and the final decision will make a difference across both islands. Chris Buckler, BBC News.

Photo by Christopher Elison

BBC HEZZA BIAS:  It has already been shown conclusively that the BBC1 bulletin headlines over the past month have strongly favoured the ‘remain’ side in the EU debate. Last night, this bias continued with a vengeance. The eight-minute sequence after the headlines amounted to a sustained, deliberate attack on the ‘out’ case. Newsreader Huw Edwards introduced the item:

The deepening divisions in Conservative ranks on Britain’s future in the EU were exposed when Lord Heseltine accused Boris Johnson of losing his judgment, with “preposterous, obscene remarks”. Mr Johnson had compared the EU with Hitler’s desire to dominate Europe.

The report that followed was in three parts. In the first, political editor Laura Kuenssberg emphasised how deep the Conservative divisions over the EU are becoming; in part 2, about Nigel Farage, deputy political editor John Pienaar included a vox pop claiming that Farage was a ‘Nazi’, suggested that he had perfected the technique of faking sincerity, and concluded by saying that ‘he split opinion like no-one else’; in the third, business editor Simon Jack, noting that many employers were writing to their staff to urge a ‘remain’ vote stressed that ‘the weight of opinion’ of employers was with ‘remain’.

The first sequence was focused most on what Lord Heseltine had said about Boris Johnson. He was quoted as saying

….I think the strain of the campaign is beginning to tell on him. I think his judgment is going. This is the most serious decision Britain has faced in a generation and it’s descending into an extraordinarily nasty situation…He is behaving now irresponsibly and recklessly and I fear that his judgment is going…. Every time he makes one of these extraordinary utterances, people in the Conservative Party will question whether he now has the judgment for that position.

Laura Kuenssberg then noted that Boris Johnson had said that people wanted facts about the EU, not arguments about personalities and suggested supporters of \remain’ were colluding with big business. She included a direct quote to the effect that immigration was hitting wage packets and big business wanted it that way.  There was then a quote from Labour deputy leader John McDonnell, prefaced with an observation that he had claimed that ‘Tory in-fighting is dragging the whole campaign down’; and finally, there was a quote from David Cameron in which he claimed that the Islamic State, the regime in Baghdad and President Putin would be happy if the UK left the EU. Kuenssber concluded:

Boris Johnson had already been accused of choosing Out because of his own ambition. If it all goes wrong, perhaps that decision could be burn his future chances.

Huw Edwards then said that Nigel Farage had warned that anger over current levels of immigration could lead to blood on the streets, and claimed that the only solution was an ‘exit’ vote. John Pienaar included comment from Farage to that effect, and also that the rancour within the Conservative party was now so great that if there was a narrow ‘remain’ vote, it could lead to a second referendum. Pienaar then observed that ‘in a campaign that is getting more bitter by the day’, he (Farage) ‘splits opinion like no-one else’. There was then a vox pop from someone who said ‘he’s a Nazi, he’s too far-right’. Someone else said Farage ‘told the truth’, and the third vox pop said he was ‘not the guy who stands with working people’. Pienaar then repeated that Farage was a ‘divisive figure’ who was either loathed or liked him, which was why the Vote Leave campaign was ‘keeping a safe distance’.

Simon Jack opened by saying that Microsoft and Aviva, with 17,000 UK employees were among the private companies pointing out that it was their view that the UK should remain in the EU and that exit would mean a reverse of economic recovery.  He then noted that it was not all ’one-way traffic’ and that the chairman of Weatherspoon’s had claimed that ‘remain’ would mean giving power away to an unelected elite in Brussels.   Jack noted that ‘the weight of opinion is with remain’ and then said that the Confederation of British Industry had declared that it was ‘quite right and proper’ that employers should lay out the facts as they saw them. He pointed out that Brexit groups had claimed that what employers said was not necessarily right and also that some of these pro-EU groups had in the past supported joining the euro. Jack concluded that it was hard to ignore in-box messages.

Overall, detailed analysis of the transcript reveals a number of bias issues.  In the Jack sequence, the main thrust of his argument was that most employers wanted to ‘remain’ and bolstered the scale involved by specially noting that Aviva had 17,000 employees in the UK. By contrast he decided not to mention that that Weatherspoon’s has 35,000 staff, or give any evidence why he was so sure that the ‘remain’ numbers were so high.  Pienaar seemed , as has already been noted, to be most determined to say that Nigel Farage was ‘divisive, and he bolstered his argument by choosing to include a vox pop which contained the observation that5 he was a ‘Nazi’.    Was this fair?  How did Pienaar justify bracketing the support of 4m voters at the last general election with such a verdict?   The Kuenssberg sequence placed heavy emphasis on Lord Hesletine’s views and they seemed to confirm that there was indeed civil war in the Conservative party. The inclusion of the comments from David Cameron and John McDonnell heightened that projection, and also bracketed the ‘leave’ case with extremist regimes.

The issue here is rather large.  Since 1999, when the News-watch first began monitoring the BBC’s EU’s content, Heseltine has been very regularly used by BBC to highlight such problems about ‘Europe’. Kathy Gyngell explained the history of this issue during last year’s General Election, when yet again, he was wheeled out to warn  about the dangers of  not supporting the EU; that there would be no co-operation from the EU over immigration unless, in effect, the Conservative party became more enthusiastic about the EU.

The fact is that Heseltine stopped being an active politician in 2001, but the BBC has regularly used him over the years to draw attention to, ‘Tory splits’. This BBC1 News at Ten sequence continued that tradition. The programme editors elevated the importance of his remarks to a major level, and then buttressed that ‘row’ with two items which drew deliberate attention to the weakness of the ‘leave’ case by emphasising how deeply divisive Nigel Farage was and then by ramming home how much big business was supporting ‘remain’.

Here is the transcript in full:

Transcript of BBC1 ‘News at Ten’ 17th May 2016, Boris Johnson and Lord Heseltine, 10.07pm

HUW EDWARDS:             Well, it’s policies that matter, not personal attacks – that’s the response from Boris Johnson’s team following highly-critical remarks made by the former Conservative minister, Lord Heseltine. The deepening divisions in Conservative ranks on Britain’s future in the EU were exposed when Lord Heseltine accused Boris Johnson of losing his judgment, with “preposterous, obscene remarks”. Mr Johnson had compared the EU with Hitler’s desire to dominate Europe. Our political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, has the story.

BORIS JOHNSON Conservative, Vote Leave:         Take back control of this country. Can you hear me at the back? (cheering)

LAURA KUENSSBERG:     Whose side are you on? Outers and Inners were both desperate to get him on theirs. But with recent claims about President Obama, invoking Hitler in the EU debate, and today, claiming, wrongly, that EU interferes in bunches of bananas, someone who knows a thing or two about the Tory leadership said Boris Johnson has gone too far.

LORD HESELTINE Former Deputy Prime Minister, Remain:             I think the strain of the campaign is beginning to tell on him. I think his judgment is going. This is the most serious decision Britain has faced in a generation and it’s descending into an extraordinarily nasty situation.

LK:         Campaigns often get very dirty. People say things they don’t necessarily mean because they’re trying to win?

LH:         He is behaving now irresponsibly and recklessly and I fear that his judgment is going.

LK:         Do you think he still could potentially be the leader of the Conservative Party?

LH:         (fragment of word, or word unclear) Every time he makes one of these extraordinary utterances, people in the Conservative Party will question whether he now has the judgment for that position.

LK:         But look at this. Boris has political pulling power.

BJ:         Are we going to turn out on June 23rd everybody? (crowd shouts ‘yes’) Yes, they are.

LK:         His team say tonight people want the arguments about the EU, not personalities. He made his strongest attack so far on his Tory opponents in the Remain camp, claiming they’re colluding with big business.

BJ:         Some of the people on the FTSE 100, they don’t care about uncontrolled immigration, of course they don’t. But what happens is that their pay packets go ever higher and higher whereas the wages of most people in this country have not increased and in some cases have actually been going down. My friends, it is a stitch-up.

LK:         The decision for all of us is much bigger than the career of any one Conservative politician. But this is a significant slap-down for Boris Johnson and the bitterness inside the Tory Party is hard to ignore. But both sides have to make this feel like it really matters and they’ve both been accused of hype. But Labour says the Tory in-fighting is dragging the whole campaign down.

JOHN MCDONNELL Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, Remain:             I think the debate has degenerated into the worst form of negativity and brought out the worst in Westminster politics. And the negativity has been overwhelming at times. It’s time to turn this debate around, drive out the politics of despair and offer a vision for Britain in Europe.

LK:         But in the glitter of the City, the Prime Minister claimed today the leader of so-called Islamic State would be pleased if we vote to leave.

DAVID CAMERON:          It is worth asking the question, who would be happy if we left? Putin might be happy. I suspect al-Baghdadi might be happy. When we’ve got a difficult decision to make, you should ask what it means for your country’s prosperity, what it means for the families, what it means for jobs and you should ask your friends what they think.

LK:         Boris Johnson had already been accused of choosing Out because of his own ambition. If it all goes wrong, perhaps that decision could be burn his future chances. Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News, Westminster.

HE:        Well, the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, has warned that anger over levels of migration could lead to violence on the streets – and he insists that the only answer is for Britain to vote to Leave the European Union. He’s been talking to our deputy political editor, John Pienaar.

JOHN PIENAAR: Nigel Farage, 37 days to go, are you sure you’re going to win?

NIGEL FARAGE UKIP Leader, Leave:         Well, I’m confident. The other side won’t talk to me, that must be good.

JP:          Perfect sincerity. When you can fake that, you have cracked it. Not that his desire to see Britain quit the EU isn’t real, it’s his life. But he’s such a performer that for many Nigel Farage is the UK Independence Party and, for him, win or lose, this is no farewell tour. The message couldn’t be clearer.

NF:        When Isis say they will use this migrant crisis to flood the Continent with their jihadi fighters, I suggest we take them seriously.

JP:          Get the message? Well, over a curry lunch, there is more. Anger over EU migration might, just might, lead to blood on the streets.

NF:        I think it’s legitimate to say that if people feel they have lost control completely, and we have lost control of our borders completely, as members of the European Union, and if people feel that voting doesn’t change anything, then violence is the next step. Now, I’m not . . .

JP:          Even in this country, in peaceful Britain?

NF:        I find it difficult to contemplate it happening here, but nothing is impossible. I’m meeting people (fades out)

JP:          And what if Britain voted to remain, pressure for a second referendum?

NF:        The rancour between the two sides of the Conservative Party is now so great that if the Prime Minister was to pull off a narrow victory, I have a feeling that a lot of them simply wouldn’t be reconciled to it.

JP:          Today’s debate audience showed the Farage effect. In a campaign that is getting more bitter by the day, he splits opinion like no-one else.

VOX POP MALE:              To me, I’m afraid it’s (sic, means he’s) a Nazi, he’s too far-right.

JP:          A Nazi, that’s a bit strong?

VPM:     I know it’s a bit strong.

VOX POP FEMALE:          I personally, I think he’s been brandished (sic) a racist because he’s talking common-sense about numbers.

VOX POP MALE 2:           He is the only person that is telling us the truth, whether we want to hear it or not.

VOX POP FEMALE 2:       He’s not really the kind of guy who stands with working people. I think he does a good job of making it look like he is though.

JP:          It was arguably fear of Nigel Farage and Eurosceptic feeling that drove David Cameron to promise this referendum in the first place. He is a divisive figure. People either tend to like him or loathe him and that is one big reason why the official Vote Leave campaign is keeping a safe distance. (at an ice cream van) Nigel, what are you going to have?

NF:        A 99, please.

JP:          For this political outsider, nothing would taste sweeter than a vote to leave.

NF:        There are 37 days to go, we are in battle, we are charging and I’ll keep doing it!

JP:          Yes, Nigel Farage preaches best to the converted.

NF:        (to voter) Hello, you alright? But so much depends on getting your supporters to turn out and vote. Who’s to say he won’t have the last laugh.

NF:        Are we voting out?

UNNAMED VOTER:         Yes.

NF:        Good.

JP:          John Pienaar, BBC News.

HE:        And some of Britain’s biggest private companies have entered the referendum debate by sending letters directly to staff outlining the impact a British exit would have on their businesses. Let’s talk to Simon Jack, our business editor, what are they saying Simon?

SIMON JACK:     Well you know, even if you wanted to avoid this debate, this is going to be hard because these are messages dropping into the in-boxes of tens of thousands of employees, a real flurry of them.  Let me give you a quick flavour, we’ll start with Microsoft, who say, the boss says in a blog, ‘our view is that the UK should remain in the EU.’ Aviva, 17,000 UK employees, they warn the economic recovery could go into reverse. Now, it’s not all one-way traffic, the boss, the chairman of Wetherspoon’s says that a vote to remain would give power away to an unelected elite in Brussels. So, it isn’t one-way traffic, but I would say the weight of opinion, of employers, is with Remain. Is it OK for employers to, you know, get involved in this way? The CBI, the employers groups says yes, it’s quite right and proper that they should lay out the facts as they see them. The Vote Leave campaign describe this as a Government and big business stitch-up. So, you know, a difference of opinion there. One other Brexiteer says, look,  the CBI can say what it likes, what your employer says does not mean that it’s right, harking back to the fact that some of these groups were ones which supported joining the euro all those years ago.  But as I say, very hard to ignore some of these messages, so even if you didn’t want to be involved in the campaign, when it’s in your inbox it’s very hard to ignore indeed.

HE:        Okay, Simon, again, thanks very much, Simon Jack there for us, our business editor.

Photo by Chatham House, London

NON-BIAS BIAS? With the BBC, the devil is often in the detail. And even when figures from the Corporation set out to be ‘unbiased’, they fail dismally.  On Saturday, the Radio 4 Today programme lined up four of its most senior editors to analyse claims being made by the main two sides in the referendum debate.  Broadly, this is what they did and said:

Economics editor Kamal Ahmad analysed the claims of Vote Leave that EU membership costs the UK £350 million a week. His conclusion was the figure is much less; Vote Leave was not taking into account the UK’s rebate or the amount that the EU spends on the UK.

Home editor Mark Easton investigated similarly sweeping claims from Chancellor George Osborne that households would be £4,300 a week worse off by 2030 if the UK exited the EU. Easton decided the Chancellor was wrong because he was basing the forecast on an over-simplistic division of GDP, rather than actual incomes.  He also pointed out that the Treasury forecasts also assumed that most Britons would actually be significantly richer by 2030.

‘Europe’ editor Katya Adler examined whether Michael Gove’s warning that EU expansion would lead to an extra 88m people who are much poorer than those in the UK being able to settle here. Adler said that this was extremely unlikely to happen, not least because it was not certain that Turkey – with 75 million – would be able to join

Business editor Simon Jack checked David Cameron’s claim that 3m UK jobs were ‘linked to the European union’. Jack said that not all jobs would be at risk if the UK left the EU because they were dependent on trade with EU countries rather than EU membership.

Two claims each by the Leave and remain sides were thus debunked. That looks balanced. But closer inspection of the transcripts yields other problems.  First Katya Adler. The claim by Michael Gove, contained in article he wrote for the Daily Mail, was that the EU was considering applications to join from Albania, Turkey, Macedonia. Montenegro and Serbia, countries with a combined population of 88m, most of whom had significantly lower living standards and incomes than those in the UK. He said if the applications were approved, which seemed increasingly likely, these people would have the right to use UK facilities, including the NHS. His argument about the dangers to the UK from these countries was also framed in parallel with observations that the influx from countries which had recently joined the EU had been significantly higher than predicted. Overall, his warning was that the EU was on a course which could add substantially to the UK’s existing infrastructure and security problems, and if the UK remained a member of the EU, it could little or nothing to stop this. The bias point here is that Adler, in framing her response, chose to put the emphasis completely elsewhere. She said first of all that the barriers to entry to the EU by the five countries were unlikely to be resolved until at least 2020 and even then, agreement to their accession had to be unanimous among the 28 existing members. She also asserted that for Michael Gove to be right every man, woman and child – all 88 million of them –  would ‘have to move to the UK’.  Gove’s arguments in the Daily Mail feature, however, were not hinged on either point.  He was rather arguing that joining was on the cards (it is) and that potentially significant numbers of their citizens were likely to come, as had happened when other poorer countries had joined the EU.  Overall, of course, no one knows when or if or on what terms Turkey and the other countries will join the EU. But the purpose of Gove’s feature was to point out that this issue is live, that other similar accessions had already taken place, and that potentially, a further 88m would have access because of EU rules to the UK. Nothing of what Adler said disproved that, and especially her bald assertion that:

so, for Michael Gove to be right this would mean that all the citizens of these countries, every man woman and child would have to move to the UK.

Simon Jack’s ‘debunking’ of David Cameron’s claims about 3m jobs being dependent on the EU was also not what it seemed. The problem was that he looked at trade only through a very narrow prism. Brexit campaigners argue that EU membership forces the UK to rely too much on trade with EU countries; if there was an exit, trading possibilities and patterns would change and would result new business opportunities with countries throughout the world. The whole point of exit is thus to end reliance on the shrinking (in global terms) economies of EU members. Jack, however, did not even consider that, he looked only at what would happen within the current EU trading framework.  Yes, he pointed out that these jobs are dependent on trade with the EU, rather than membership of the EU, but the narrow prism he used meant that exiting the EU could have a negative impact, and pointed out that countries outside the EU but within Europe suffered from not being members.

Overall, Adler and Jack – far from definitively affirming or debunking anything – showed only that senior BBC reporters consider EU-related issues through skewed lenses of their own choosing.

Here is the transcript:

Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 14th May 2016, EU Referendum, Four Correspondents, 8.37am

JOHN HUMPHRYS: The referendum campaign’s about as close as these things get – if there’s one thing we can say with certainty it is that there is a huge amount of uncertainty, and if there’s one refrain you here over and over again from the voters, it is this: why aren’t we being told the facts? Which raises the obvious questions: whose facts?  You’ll hear an ‘in’ campaigner asserting one thing, and an ‘out’ campaigner asserting quite the opposite.  Here’s a flavour.

GEORGE OSBORNE:          Britain would be permanently poorer if we left the European Union, to the tune of £4300 for every household.

UNKNOWN: We would be better off out, we would be richer and more successful.

DAVID CAMERON: Indeed, three million people’s jobs in our country are already linked . . .

MICHAEL GOVE:    What is a fact is that give more than £350 million to the European Union . . .

ANDREW MARR (?) Well, hang on.

JOHN MAJOR:          The fact that we are the access point to 500 million people market produces a great deal of investment in this country.

MG:     . . . you don’t have tariffs then both sides can accept but there’s no need to erect them . . .

GO:     And that would be catastrophic people’s jobs and their incomes and their livelihoods.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH:       All forecasts (word or words unclear) are wrong, you should take them all with a pinch of salt whether they come from the Governor of the Bank of England, the IMF or any other organisation.

JH:       So, how are the poor old voters expected to make up their minds if the campaign leaders can’t agree on even the most basic facts? Well, that’s where we come in.  We’ve rounded up four of our own editors to put you straight, well, to try to put you straight on for of the most contentious areas.  They, the editors that is, Kamal Ahmed, Mark Easton, Katya Adler and Simon Jack, and the facts, Kamal – Kamal Ahmed that is, our economics editor, your fact: ‘We send the EU £350 million a week’ that is what the Leave campaign says?  Is that true?

KAMAL AHMED:    Right, well I do love the whiff of a statistical chart in the morning, so I have been digging through figures behind this to save our dear listeners from having to do such a painful thing.  Table 9.9 of the Office of National Statistics Pink Book, 2015 . . .

JH:       (speaking over) Know it well.

KA:     That is going to be my start point for this.  The big point to make, I think, the beginning is the UK pays more . . . sorry, the UK pays more into the EU than it receives, that is the big first point.  Is it £350 million a week?  Let’s see.  So, £350 million a week is our gross contribution to the European Union, that’s just over £19 billion, but we get a rebate from the EU (words unclear due to speaking over)

JH:       (speaking over) The (word unclear, ‘famous’?) Thatcher rebate?

KA:     Yes, rebate is a bit of . . . a bit of a misnomer here, actually, because we never pay the money in and get the rebate, we actually get the rebate first, and then pay the money in.  That rebate is worth £4.4 billion a year, so that makes our actual contribution to the European Union £14.7 billion, which is actually £285 million a week. But hang on . . .

JH:       (speaking over) It’s still a lot of money.

KA:     . . . this is Europe, this is Europe John, got to be complicated, got to keep those Brussels officials in work obviously.  We also get erm . . . money from the EU to support the UK economy, farming, we get regional funds, there’s some money for science research, that amounts to about £4.8 billion a year, so that makes a net contribution that the UK gives to the European Union of £9.9 billion, or about £190 million a week. That is from the ONS statistics.

JH:       Right, so when they say on the side of their battlebus and in every other interview that you do with them, ‘We pay in 350 million quid a week’ that is not true.

KA:     That is the gross contribution, which does not take into account the rebate we receive from the EU and the money we receive from the EU by way of grants and support for research and science.

JH:       Right. Thank you for that Kamal.  Er, let’s turn to Mark Easton, our home editor, and your question, well it isn’t a question, your statement if you like, Mark, families would be £4,300 worse off by 2030 – that is George Osborne who made that claim, the Remain camp, of course.  True or false?

MARK EASTON:      Right (laughs) Okay. Erm, I haven’t got any charts for you this morning John, but I can tell you the Treasury claim is based on GDP per household.  What they’ve done is they forecast what they think GDP would be in 2030 . . .

JH:       (speaking over) Gross Domestic Product.

ME:     Gross domestic . . . all the stuff that we produce, what GDP would be in 2030, so they’re throwing quite a long way ahead, and they’ve done it for both staying in the EU, and leaving the EU and then calculated the difference. But GDP per household, it’s not the same thing as household income (laughter in voice) as most people would tell you – if you simply divide current GDP by the number of British households, you get a figure of around £68,000 per household, well, we know average household income, what we would regard as, you know, what money we’re getting in, as about £44-45,000 so the, the idea of a cost to UK families of £4300, it’s not cost in the way that most people would think of it.

JH:       So, we won’t actually be worse off by £4300? I mean, that’s the bald fact?

ME:     No, exactly, the, the Treasury model doesn’t suggest UK families are going to be poorer than they are now, in fact, the modelling suggests families will be richer in 2030 if we leave the EU, what they’re saying is their models suggest we wouldn’t be quite as rich as if we stay in the EU, and that’s a difference of £4300 per household.  The last point I think, to be made is that financial modelling, as we heard in the introduction there, is obviously only as good as the information and the forecasts that you put into it . . .

JH:       Right.

ME:     . . . and often they have been proved quite wrong.  One aspect of the modelling that’s raised eyebrows is that it uses the number of households now, today, to divide estimated GDP for 2030, taking no account of population growth or the effects of . . .

JH:       (interrupting) Ah.

ME:     . . . changes to net immigration for instance . . .

JH:       (speaking over) And, and you lead us nicely into our next thought then, er . . . contentious area, if you like, and that is up to 88 million people from nations much poorer than our own will have the right to live and work here, that’s what Michael Gove said in the Daily Mail just the other day, the Leave campaign of course, Katya Adler is our Europe editor – right or wrong Katya?

KATYA ADLER:      Well, Kamal likes to start the morning on a Saturday with statistical charts, I’m . . . quite fond of crystal ball gazing on a Saturday morning myself, so if we look into our crystal ball, Michael Gove is right, there are five countries that have started talks with the EU about becoming a member one day, that’s Turkey, Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia. The population of all those countries roughly adds up to 88 million, so, for Michael Gove to be right this would mean that all the citizens of these countries, every man woman and child would have to move to the UK, and it would also mean that (sic) the countries actually getting into the EU, which is not impossible, but it’s difficult.  The European Commission . . .

JH:       (speaking over) Especially with Turkey.

KA:     Especially with Turkey, but . . . for any of them, er, the European Commission has said there’ll be no new members in the EU until at least 2020, even then, erm, their membership would have to be approved by every single EU leader, by the European Parliament and by national parliaments. Every mem— every new member has to apply all EU current rules before they can join, that’s in 35 different policy areas, and you mentioned there Turkey, of course Turkey is the most controversial of the five, and the biggest, out of the 88 million, it’s 75 million.  And Turkey started its talks to join the EU ten years ago, in those 10 years it’s only managed to adopt EU rules on one area, that’s science and research.  Difficulty . . . well, we can look at human rights, we can look at limits on freedom of expression, the state of public administration and very key for the EU, Turkey has to recognise fellow EU member Cyprus, which it doesn’t. And then . . .

JH:       (speaking over) Alright . . .

KA:     . . . if we look at the politics of the EU these days, John, as well, we’ve got populist parties doing very well in many countries across the EU, fears of migration dominating politics, so no one really is trumpeting the case for Turkey’s membership at the moment.

JH:       Right, Katya, thank you for that. And our final question: 3 million jobs are linked to the European Union – this is according to David Cameron.  Simon Jack, our business editor, is that right?

SIMON JACK:           Yes.  But does that mean that 3 million jobs would go if we were to leave the European Union, er, absolutely not.  There are two pieces of work done on this, one was by the South Bank Institute, back in 2003, which said just over 3 million, there’s a new piece of work out last year by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, which puts it at over 4 million.  Now, obviously, those jobs are linked with the trade, no one assumes that the trade would disappear and go up in smoke the day we left, which then puts us into this rather vexed position of looking at what our trade would look like, and you may have heard of the Swiss model, the Norway model, the WTO, even the Albanian model.  But, the rule of thumb basically, is that the more independent the UK gets, the less access you get to some of the things that you actually want, that is the trade-off, so in the Swiss model, for example, banks are allowed to sell, you know, Swiss Banks stationed here can sell throughout the rest of Europe, they can’t sell from Switzerland, it’s a system called passporting. So we would see, potentially, some jobs go in The City. In a chat with the boss of Barclays the other day, he said, ‘Would this threaten London’s place as the pre-eminent financial centre – no.  Would it make life a bit more difficult – yes.’ So basically, 3 to 4 million jobs are associated with trade, not with our membership of the European Union, how m— . . . how many jobs would go depends on how much access you get and what model you think, er, which model would erode some of that trade, and that, of course a judgment where there aren’t any settled facts, and even the Albanian model that Michael Gove wanted, the Albanian Prime Minister thought, he thought it was a bit weird that the UK wanted that, so erm . . . I’m afraid the er . . . that was his very words, so I’m afraid the chat about the different models will continue when it comes to how many jobs are at risk.

JH:       And so will this debate, Simon, Katya, Mark and Kamal, thank you all very much, I think we can conclude that none, not one of those four claims have been stood up by our editors.  Kamal’s nodding at that so I’ll take that as approval.  Thank you all very much indeed, we may very well return to this over the weeks to come.

Photo by James Cridland