EU Referendum Blog

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

BBC BORIS BIAS:  Was Boris Johnson wrong to refer to Hitler in a point about the history of attempts to unite Europe? Was what he said as controversial as was projected? Senior Labour figures Hilary Benn and Yvette Cooper certainly thought his mention was below the belt, and so did several figures in the Conservative ‘remain’ camp such as Lord Soames.

The tone of the BBC’s coverage also suggested that there were problems in his approach.  He had sent ‘sparks flying’. This is what newsreader Clive Myrie said in the BBC1 News at Ten bulletin;

The prominent Vote Leave campaigner in June’s EU referendum, Boris Johnson, has compared what he claims is the ambition of some in Europe to create a single Superstate to the aims of Adolf Hitler.  In an article for a Sunday newspaper, he said both the Nazi leader and the EU, shared similar goals but today’s politicians were simply using different methods. The shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn who backs the Remain campaign said his comments were offensive and desperate.  Here’s our political correspondent Ben Wright.

BEN WRIGHT: It’s a time for hard hats. Boris Johnson rarely does subtle but his latest intervention in the referendum campaign has sent sparks flying. A leading Leave campaigner, Mr Johnson said the last 2,000 years of European history had seen doomed attempts to recreate the Roman Empire by trying to unify it – Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods, he said.

Wright also included opinion from Hilary Benn:

I think to try and compare what Hitler and the Nazis did, the millions of people who died, Holocaust, to the free democracies of Europe coming together to trade and cooperate, and in the process to help secure peace on the continent of Europe is frankly deeply offensive.

BW: Europe’s history and Britain’s place in it has become a battleground in this referendum. Glowering over Parliament is Churchill, whose own views on Europe are being pressed into service by both sides. And the past is being invoked to stir our emotions, our gut feelings, and that’s why Boris Johnson mentioned Churchill’s wartime enemy. But of course, this referendum is really about the future, the political and economic repercussions of staying in or leaving the EU. And today the governor of the Bank of England, who does not do interviews often, decided to repeat a warning he made last week.

MARK CARNEY Bank of England Governor: What our judgement is, as a risk, is that growth will be materially slower and inflation notably higher in event of a ‘Leave’.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH MP Conservative Vote Leave: The Governor has strayed now into the expression of what is a simple, personal prediction. I don’t actually think that it is possible to say with any absolute accuracy that that will happen.

BW: Boris Johnson’s comments have whipped up a controversy this weekend. The Leave campaign knows that many big economic voices are sceptical of their case, but this referendum is about hearts as much as heads. Ben Wright, BBC News.

Wright thus two important claims based on his opinion as a BBC correspondent. First that Johnson was trying to stir up emotions and gut feelings ’and that is why he mentioned Churchill’s wartime enemy’; and second, that the leave campaign was trying to appeal to people’s hearts rather than their heads because they knew that ‘many economic voices are skeptical of their case’.

So what did Boris Johnson actually say that was so emotive and so calculated, according to Wright, to appeal also to people’s emotions?  In his interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Johnson actually said:

The whole thing began with the Roman Empire. I wrote a book on this subject, and I think it’s probably right. The truth is that the history of the last couple of thousand years has been broadly repeated attempts by various people or institutions – in a Freudian way – to rediscover the lost childhood of Europe, this golden age of peace and prosperity under the Romans, by trying to unify it. Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically.

The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods. But fundamentally what it is lacking is the eternal problem, which is that there is no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe. There is no single authority that anybody respects or understands. That is causing this massive democratic void.

Points about this are:

• Johnson’s remarks were based on his considered judgment as a historian who has studied and written about in depth European history.
• Attempts to unify Europe by Napoleon and Hitler had ended in tragic failure,
• The EU was also an attempt – by clearly different methods – to unify Europe, but it was also likely to ultimately fail because there was no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe, and there was no single authority that anyone respect6ed or understood.

What he did not say directly was that the EU and its operations are  ‘like Hitler’ or ‘like Napoleon’; his central assertion was rather that all attempts to achieve ‘European unity’ are ultimately doomed because there is no underlying allegiance to ’Europe’. Newsreader Myrie was this wrong and over-polarising in drawing the conclusion that Johnson had asserted that Hitler and the EU ‘had similar goals’. The Johnson claim was rather that the goal of ‘European unity’ was unattainable, whoever tried to achieve it, and it was based on false illusions about ancient Rome.  Ben Wright missed completely from his analysis the key point that ‘there is no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe’ and thus misled viewers.

The BBC did include in the sequence comments from Jacob Rees Mogg:

Boris was making a carefully calibrated comparison. And all these figures, Philip II of Spain, Louis XIV of France, Napoleon and Hitler were all trying to create a United States of Europe, though admittedly they wanted to do it by force whilst the EU is doing it by stealth.

The issue here is that the ‘remain’ side pounced on the Johnson remarks to suggest the Leave side was desperately trying to evoke comparisons to Hitler in order to discredit the EU. The BBC seemed to be too eager in its flagship bulletin to jump on the same bandwagon and constructed a report which seemed to be deliberately calculated to exaggerate the evocation of Hitler’s name.

Interestingly, earlier in the day, Andrew Marr appeared on his BBC1 show to strike a very different approach. In the newspaper review, Julia Hartley-Brewer said:

‘This is being overplayed. He’s saying the European Union are looking towards a federal superstate, and various people have tried this: Napoleon, Hitler…of course Hitler is the mention everyone gets, but what he is saying is true.’

Marr responded:

‘It’s much more nuanced than the headline suggests. I’m not normally one to say ‘Boris is very, very nuanced’ but he’s very careful. He specifically says ‘I’m not saying the EU people are like Hitler.’ He’s saying, ‘Again and again and again we’ve tried to have a united Europe and every single time it’s ended in tears’.

Actually, Marr also got what Johnson actually said wrong. He missed the key point about a lack of underlying loyalty. But the overall observation that his statement was ‘more nuanced’ than the headlines suggested was spot on.

Photo by BackBoris2012

On Thursday, BBC1’s main bulletins put heavy weight on the warning by Bank of England Governor Mark Carney that Brexit could lead to an economic downturn.  On Friday night, similar importance and prominence was afforded to equally strong ‘remain’ advocacy by former Prime Minister John Major and Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund.   BBC economics editor Kamal Ahmad, as in his report the previous day, left no doubt how important these warnings were.  He stated:

‘Another day in this referendum campaign and another major international organisation warns Britain about the economic risks of leaving the European Union. Of course, here in the Treasury, they are pretty pleased that the IMF has broadly backed George Osborne’s assessment and it’s not the last we are going to hear from the IMF. Just a few days before the referendum, they are going to produce a report which will talk about employment, house prices and the Brexit risk. It is thought it will be equally gloomy.’

It is of course, true that such organisations and their leaders seem to be lining up to attack the ‘out’ case, and there is no avoiding that in news terms. But there are also huge question marks why this should be. Have their efforts been encouraged and coordinated by the government? There is widesapread suspicion that it is. And is it because – as the Guido website unearthed – they are all actually in the pay of the EU? These are legitimate questions to ask, but these possibilities and such exploration does not feature in the BBC reporting. On Friday night, Ahmad simply reported the Lagarde claims; his curiosity did not extend any further, and his main intent was to stress how importantly negative against the ‘out’  case the claims were.

The overall report contained counter opinion against John Major’s intervention from the Conservative minister Dominic Raab, and in reaction to the Lagarde claims from Priti Patel, also a government minister. But their responses were no more than about 50 words each. Raab said it was irresponsible not to talk about immigration in the light of new statistics, and Patel that the IMF figures could not be taken at face value e vital to talk. By contrast, newsreader Fiona Bruce said this about Sir John Major’s claims:

Sir John Major has launched a stinging attack on senior Conservatives heading the campaign to leave the EU. The former Tory Prime Minister said the Justice Secretary Michael Gove should be embarrassed and ashamed of his anti-EU rhetoric. And he called on Boris Johnson and former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan-Smith to apologise for peddling false figures

Reporter Eleanor Garnier added that this was:

‘… a big name making a big intervention. And making his own case for staying in the EU, he attacked claims made by Tory colleagues, Boris Johnson, the former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan-Smith, and the Justice Secretary Michael Gove, that leaving the EU could save millions of pounds a week.

JM: Those who make such demonstrably false claims, knowingly do so, need to apologise that they have got their figures so badly wrong and stop peddling a clear-cut untruth.

EG: And he warned colleagues who he says are raising fear and prejudice with their arguments over immigration, that it’s a treacherous road to go down. JM: Some of the Brexit leaders morph into Ukip and turn to their default position, immigration. This is their trump card. I urge them to take care. This is dangerous territory that if handled carelessly, can open up long-term divisions in our country.

EG: This is a significant intervention from the former Prime Minister. He’s naming people with ambitions to one day lead the Conservative party as reckless, and as this referendum campaign goes on the Tory-on-Tory attacks are getting more personal. The question – how united can and will the party be when all this is over?’

After Raab’s contribution (which was included without any other explanation), she concluded:

He rarely makes interventions, but this decision he says is final, and he’ll be hoping people are listening.

Fiona Bruce said about the Lagarde/IMF contribution:

‘Another powerful voice arguing today for the UK to remain in the EU was the head of the International Monetary Fund. Christine Lagarde warned it could be at least “pretty bad”, and at worst, “very, very bad” if the UK pulls out. She said it would hit British growth, investment and house prices.’

Kamal Ahmad then went on to say:

‘Step-by-step, the government believes the economic case is being made. Today, another expert and another grim warning.

GEORGE OSBORNE: A particular welcome to Christine Lagarde and her team. KA: The IMF argued house prices could fall, borrowing costs increase, and the government may have to raise taxes and cut public services further.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE International Monetary Fund: Thank you very much, Chancellor.

KA: I asked Christine Lagarde for the outlook if Britain left the EU.

CL: The consequences would be negative, if the UK was to leave the European Union. It would impact people’s life. So that means, higher prices. Less growth means less jobs, so higher unemployment.

KA: Does the Treasury influence you? Are you pushed by George Osborne to be as bleak as you can be about the effects of Britain leaving the European Union?

CL: The IMF does not get pushed around. What we do is we study their numbers. We assess the validity. We talk to many other people.’

Ahmad then included the comment about the importance of Lagarde’s intervention already noted at the beginning of the blog above, and then had a soundbite from a ComRes pollster, who said:

Any individual voice or report or organisation is unlikely to have a major impact that we will see in the polls tomorrow. It is more a cumulative effect, that they add up, the narrative grows and it makes voters stop and think just before they go and vote on referendum day.

This carefully chosen and edited comment added to the importance of what Lagarde and the IMF had said.

Overall, therefore, the BBC’s flagship television bulletin put heavy emphasis on the warnings from Sir John Major and Christine Lagarde, and both the newsreader narrative and the respective correspondent reports amplified strongly their ‘remain’ messages.  There were clear mentions in both sequences about Vote Leave opposition, but this was afforded much less weight than the ‘remain’ contributions. Of course, there is no requirement for every edition of a daily programme to be balanced – that can be achieved cumulatively according to the news agenda. But over two consecutive nights the main BBC bulletin put very strong weight on ‘remain’ warnings. On both occasions, there was only minimal effort to explore counter and no attempt to explore counter arguments. Equally, there was no inclusion of material that aired whether the Lagarde/Major/Carney warnings were being orchestrated or influenced by the EU itself. These items do not demonstrate conclusively in themselves that the BBC is biased in favour of the ‘remain’ case, but taken with other evidence on this site, suggest strongly that there is serious cause for concern about the way the ‘out’ case is being under-reported or downplayed, and about how the ‘remain’ case is being deliberately and systematically amplified.

This is the full transcript of the sequence:

 Transcript of BBC1 ‘News at Ten’ 13th May 2016, EU Referendum, 10.06pm

Introduction

FIONA BRUCE:   Also tonight: The gloves are off: Sir John Major tells senior Tories they should be ashamed and embarrassed by their fearmongering over the EU.

Main Story

FB:         Sir John Major has launched a stinging attack on senior Conservatives heading the campaign to leave the EU. The former Tory Prime Minister said the Justice Secretary Michael Gove should be embarrassed and ashamed of his anti-EU rhetoric. And he called on Boris Johnson and former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan-Smith to apologise for peddling false figures. The Leave campaign responded ‘the public will decide whether to stay in the EU, not politicians.’ Eleanor Garnier reports.

ELEANOR GARNIER:        He’s a big name making a big intervention. With less than six weeks until the vote, the former Prime Minister’s gots a warning for the Conservatives on the EU.

SIR JOHN MAJOR Former Prime Minister:             A quarter of a century ago, it bitterly divided my party.

EG:        And making his own case for staying in the EU, he attacked claims made by Tory colleagues, Boris Johnson, the former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan-Smith, and the Justice Secretary Michael Gove, that leaving the EU could save millions of pounds a week.

JM:        Those who make such demonstrably false claims, knowingly do so, need to apologise that they have got their figures so badly wrong and stop peddling a clear-cut untruth.

EG:        And he warned colleagues who he says are raising fear and prejudice with their arguments over immigration, that it’s a treacherous road to go down.

JM:        Some of the Brexit leaders morph into Ukip and turn to their default position, immigration. This is their trump card. I urge them to take care. This is dangerous territory that if handled carelessly, can open up long-term divisions in our country.

EG:        This is a significant intervention from the former Prime Minister. He’s naming people with ambitions to one day lead the Conservative party as reckless, and as this referendum campaign goes on the Tory-on-Tory attacks are getting more personal. The question – how united can and will the party be when all this is over?

DOMINIC RAAB Conservative, Vote Leave:           We have this week had the official statistics showing a massive underestimate in the amount of immigration from the EU into the UK. I think it would be irresponsible not to be talking about that, because there are issues people care about. The pressure on jobs and wages, the impact on the NHS and housing.

EG:        He rarely makes interventions, but this decision he says is final, and he’ll be hoping people are listening. Eleanor Garnier, BBC News, Westminster.

FB:         Another powerful voice arguing today for the UK to remain in the EU was the head of the International Monetary Fund. Christine Lagarde warned it could be at least “pretty bad”, and at worst, “very, very bad” if the UK pulls out. She said it would hit British growth, investment and house prices. Vote Leave campaigners say the IMF has been wrong before about the British economy and is wrong again. Our Economics Editor Kamal Ahmed reports.

KAMAL AHMED:              Step-by-step, the government believes the economic case is being made. Today, another expert and another grim warning.

GEORGE OSBORNE:        A particular welcome to Christine Lagarde and her team.

KA:        The IMF argued house prices could fall, borrowing costs increase, and the government may have to raise taxes and cut public services further.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE International Monetary Fund:          Thank you very much, Chancellor.

KA:        I asked Christine Lagarde for the outlook if Britain left the EU.

CL:         The consequences would be negative, if the UK was to leave the European Union. It would impact people’s life. So that means, higher prices. Less growth means less jobs, so higher unemployment.

KA:        Does the Treasury influence you? Are you pushed by George Osborne to be as bleak as you can be about the effects of Britain leaving the European Union?

CL:         The IMF does not get pushed around. What we do is we study their numbers. We assess the validity. We talk to many other people.

KA:        Another day in this referendum campaign and another major international organisation warns Britain about the economic risks of leaving the European Union. Of course, here in the Treasury, they are pretty pleased that the IMF has broadly backed George Osborne’s assessment and it’s not the last we are going to hear from the IMF. Just a few days before the referendum, they are going to produce a report which will talk about employment, house prices and the Brexit risk. It is thought it will be equally gloomy. Looking for votes, the Leave campaign on the road today with a message that the IMF had been wrong before and was wrong now.

PRITI PATEL MP Conservative, Vote Leave:           I don’t think we can take their forecasts at face value because of their background and also, on the basis that our economy is successful right now. I believe that if we vote to leave the European Union, Britain has a brighter, more secure and more prosperous future outside of the EU.

KA:        Shoreham on the south coast, here to ask the question, is anyone listening as everyone from the Bank of England to the IMF warns against leaving the EU?

VOX POP FEMALE:          Yeah, I would listen to that information and take it on board. It would help me make a decision.

VOX POP MALE:              Constantly, you are getting different information from one side to another. As a personal thing, no, I would not take any notice of it.

KA:        The governor of the Bank of England, the head of the IMF. There is evidence the economy is high up in the minds of undecided voters.

TOM MLUDZINSKI Director of Political Polling, ComRes:   Any individual voice or report or organisation is unlikely to have a major impact that we will see in the polls tomorrow. It is more a cumulative effect, that they add up, the narrative grows and it makes voters stop and think just before they go and vote on referendum day.

KA:        There is more to the UK economy than the referendum. The IMF said there were other long-term risks, high levels of household debt and low productivity. They will still be problems, however Britain votes on June 23. Kamal Ahmed, BBC News.

FB:         The BBC’s Reality Check team has been examining Christine Lagarde’s comments, and getting to the facts behind the claims on both sides of the referendum debate. You can find their work at bbc.co.uk/realitycheck.

FB:         There are signs tonight that the European Union’s efforts to stem the migrant crisis are beginning to have a significant impact. Numbers arriving from Turkey onto the Greek islands are down around 90% in April compared with the previous month, according to the EU border agency Frontex. It follows a deal struck between the EU and Turkey. But as our chief correspondent Gavin Hewitt now reports from Izmir, the deal is coming under pressure.

GAVIN HEWITT:              These are the Turkish beaches from where tens of thousands of refugees left for their perilous journey to Europe. Today, all that remains are discarded clothes. Almost no refugees are making the crossing to Greece. But the deal between Turkey and the EU to solve the migrant crisis is in danger of collapsing. Go into the fields near the Turkish coast close to Greece and you find Syrian refugees like Murat, who once dreamt of going to Europe but has given up. The Turkish-EU deal signed in March has all but blocked the migrant trail.

MURAD Syrian Refugee (translated) The sea border with Greece is now closed. If someone wants to go to Europe, they cannot. I did want to go, but now I can’t.

GH:        The Turkish coast guard patrols are much more rigorous. Just two months ago, 8,000 refugees crossed here in one month. So far in May, the numbers are around 300. And for those who make it to Greece, the route north through the Balkans is lined with fences and riot police.

PIHRIL ERCHOBAN Director, Association for Solidarity with Refugees:       There is no possibility to move further from Greece, and in Greece, the movement from the islands to the mainland became impossible now.

GH:        So, in Turkey, the tables where the smugglers did their deals are almost empty and the shops can’t sell their life jackets. The Turkish government says it’s honoured its part of the deal.

MUSTAPHA TOPRAK Governor of Izmir (translated) If the refugees go outside the cities where they’re registered, they’re told to go back. If they try to reach the coast and escape, the police will catch them.

GH:        The easing of the refugee crisis depends on a controversial deal between Turkey and the EU. Turkey clamping down on the migrants, in exchange for visa-free travel to much of Europe. But the European Parliament is insisting that first, Turkey must carry out further reforms. Turkey says it has done enough and the whole deal is looking fragile. So there is a risk of the migrant crisis returning. The developments are being followed closely in Germany, where most of the previous refugees went, and by the referendum campaigns in Britain. Gavin Hewitt, BBC News, Izmir.

Photo by Chatham House, London

DOUBLE BIAS: Yesterday’s coverage by the BBC of stories related to the EU referendum showed deep bias against the Brexit case. On immigration there was bias by emission, and on economics there was bias by exaggeration and by not including the Brexit side sufficiently

Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England, elected to warn – on the basis of internal modelling – that if the UK voted to exit the EU, it could lead to a ‘technical recession’. This led the BBC1 bulletins at 6 and 10pm.  Economics editor Kamal Ahmad placed heavy stress on the importance of the warning and concluded that Carney and the Bank of England’s gloom was shared by many other leading economists and economic forecasters.  There were brief mentions at the beginning of the report that supporters of exit contested the claims, and there was a short clip of former Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont stating that. But there could be no doubt that in the BBC’s estimation, this was a game-changing information. The focus was on showing that increasing numbers of authoritative figures were warning against Brexit, and that the exit side’s response was inadequate and limited.

In the same bulletins, another story that was relevant to the referendum debate was totally downplayed. Yesterday, the Daily Mail was among numerous news outlets reporting that the Office of National Statistics had released figures that confirmed that immigration from the EU to the UK was up to three times previous estimates. The report included this:

Former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith said the estimate showed migration was ‘running out of control’ and accused the government of trying to bury the news under other announcements.

‘The White Paper on BBC reforms was published today and David Cameron is hosting an international anti-corruption summit in London. They put it out on a day when they also put out something in the hope that you at the BBC will say ‘oh, we’ve got to really report the BBC’ and other bits they’re piling out. I’ve been in government long enough to know how these things are done,’ Mr Duncan Smith said.

His forecast proved to be correct. The heavy focus of BBC reporting yesterday (as well as on the Mark Carney comments) was on its own future, as is reported here. On BBC1 in the 6pm and 10pm bulletins, mention of the ONS figures was confined to a couple of sentences, and on the website, the main report on the figures here was focused on saying, in effect, that the claims by figures such as Ian Duncan Smith and John Redwood (who made similar points to IDS in the House of Commons) could be totally discounted because the ONS report dealt with temporary immigrants only.

Overall, the contrast between the handling of the Carney and immigration stories could not have been greater. The former was stoked up to the maximum extent so that the economic forecasting was elevated to major importance to show that Brexit was a dangerous option. The latter was heavily downplayed to the extent that the claims of Brexit campaigners were effectively rubbished on an official basis by the Corporation. Such efforts by the BBC to downplay the impact of EU immigration have been a constant feature of BBC reporting for many years, as previous News-watch reports have shown.

An exchange on the Today programme’s Business Update this morning illustrated the extent to which effort s are being made by the BBC to show that Carney’s warning should be taken seriously. This is the interview in full:

Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 13^th May 2016, Business Update, 7.19am

JOHN HUMPHRYS:          Is Europe growing? I mean, the European economy, I mean specifically the Eurozone economy, and that matters.  Lucy?

LUCY BURTON:  Yes, we’ve got figures on the Eurozone economy later today, and of course they’re important figures to look at, because it gives us an update on its health.  Last month flash estimates revealed GDP increased by 0.6% in the Eurozone, 0.5% in the wider EU. Well Dr Peter Westaway is the chief European economist from Vanguard Asset Management, he’s with us now, good morning.

DR PETER WESTAWAY:  Good morning.

LB:         What do we expect to see today and why?

PW:       I think we’ll probably see a repeat of the 0.6 number, when you get these second estimates they tended not to be changed very often.  If it is changed there is a possibility it will be downgraded, people were a bit surprised by the initial numbers and there’ve been some weak industrial production numbers out yesterday which could, could weaken it.  But, but broadly speaking I think we’ll see the same picture.

LB:         And one of the big questions people have been asking is whether the ECB is doing enough to support growth in the Eurozone, or whether it’s really run out of options.

PW:       Yes, it’s difficult to say.  I mean they’re, they’re really doing as much as they can at the moment, they’re now implementing quantitative easing, they’ve started buying, they’re going to start buying corporate bonds as well as government bonds in June, they cut interest rates into negative territory which was a big surprise at the time, they’ll probably not want to do any more of that, so . . . at the moment we’re in wait-and-see mode to see how effective that is, but . . . the jury’s out on whether they’ll need to do more.  Helicopter money is being bandied about as a possibility, that’s, that’s effectively printing money and giving it to people, which . . . I don’t think we’re going to see that in Europe, but it’s been talked about.

LB:         And of course, talking about growth, yesterday, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, said that’s something we can forget about if there is a vote to leave the EU. Now just how solid an estimate can that be, because, of course, it’s never happened before?

PW:       No it’s, it’s really speculating about the unknown, but I think, to be fair to Mark Carney yesterday, most commentators have been saying that if there were a vote to leave the EU it would have a major impact on volatility in markets, just because of the uncertainty that it would engender.  And indeed, we’re already seeing a little bit of softening in the numbers, simply because of that uncertainty . . . uncertainty already happening ahead of the referendum.

LB:         And the MPC, which is the Bank body that sets interest rates said it’s going to keep rates at present at the historic low of 0.5% – but they did say they’re ready to take whatever action is needed following the referendum.  Now, briefly, what does that mean?

PW:       Well, what’s interesting about the UK outlook at the moment is that we really are coming up to a fork in the road on June 23. I think if there is a vote to leave the EU it’s pretty likely that rates are going to stay low for a long time, they could even be cut again.  On the other hand, if we vote to stay in, then I think it’s entirely likely that the UK economy could see a bit of a rebound, we might even see interest rates rising by the end of this year.  So it’s a real binary situation at the moment.

LB:         Thank you very much, Dr Peter Westaway from Vanguard Asset Management.

Photo by Images George Rex