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BBC News Chief James Harding shows anti-Brexit bias

BBC Bias, EU Referendum | 28th September 2016 | by David Keighley

James Harding, the BBC’s Director of News, has fired a broadside against those poor, misguided souls who have dared to think that the BBC’s coverage of the referendum and its aftermath have been out of kilter.

His chosen medium for this homily? Why, where else but that neutral newspaper so loved by the BBC – The Guardian?

For those not versed in BBC obfuscation (otherwise known as complaints handling), this was a classic piece. His wheeled-out-a-thousand-times defence was that he and his battalions of heroic, do-no-wrong journalists have received complaints from both sides in the referendum debate, so the coverage must therefore have been balanced.

For good measure, he also quotes BBC audience research, which he says shows that 90% of the UK population tuned into BBC programmes – further ‘proof’ that everything in the impartiality garden was rosy. That’s alright then.

Never mind that the BBC audience domination is only achieved because of the enforced regime of the television licence fee.

There’s also – as is customary in such exercises – an obligatory mea culpa. Harding accepts at the very end that mistakes in the EU coverage have been made, and states that the BBC must do better. But – as is also customary – there are no details, no examples to back this up. Whatever it was that the BBC accepts it got wrong is not disclosed.

How very convenient (for the BBC) this is. Nothing to check, nothing to look at – only a nebulous, vague misdemeanour that only the Corporation knows about.

That aside, Harding, in fact, takes up most of the space in his article in dealing with those on the Remain side who think the BBC gave too much prominence to the lies and distortions of the Brexit side. Clearly, he thinks that bias against Remain was the biggest problem. What does that say about his unconscious (and real) bias?

His defence here is that the BBC (from dear Newsnight presenter Evan Davis to that nice economics editor Kamal Ahmed) made it abundantly clear that the weight of economic opinion overwhelmingly showed – just like the BBC so rigidly maintains that there is a ‘consensus’ of scientists in favour of alarmism in the climate change debate – that leaving the EU was foolhardy.

In Harding’s book, the BBC had thus fulfilled its duty – and it was voters who got it wrong by having the temerity to ignore ‘the facts’.

Harding’s, analysis of the Brexiteers’ complaints, in sharp contrast, takes up only one paragraph, so little space that it can be quoted in full. He declared:

‘The Leavers’ complaint will, in no small part, be answered by what happens next and how we report it. The fact is that, since the EU referendum, there has been a revaluation of sterling, the Bank of England cut interest rates because it says the outlook for economic growth has weakened markedly and the government’s plans for Brexit are unclear. But consumer confidence has bounced back and manufacturing and services sectors have rebounded accordingly. In the months ahead, our job is to understand what Brexit actually means – without relish or alarm.’

This is yet more obfuscation. Of course, no-one can yet tell the outcome of Brexit, and the ‘out’ side’s complaints are not rooted there.

The reality is that since the referendum vote, there have been mixed signals about the economy, but the IMF, the OECD , the Treasury and all those who the ‘remain’ side wheeled at as ‘proof’ that Brexit would spell immediate disaster for the British economy have been proved wrong.

The nub of the ‘out’ side complaints is that the BBC has been at best mealy-mouthed and begrudging about reporting this slow-motion car crash of economic forecasting. Night after night during the referendum campaign, Davis, Ahmed and Co. trumpeted the predictions of doom with relish; the reporting of the retractions and the back-tracking since June 23 have been delivered through gritted teeth.

The reality, too, is that since Brexit, there has been a torrent of BBC negativity about the consequences of out, and all normal rules of reporting seem to have been suspended to ensure that those 90% who Harding claims watch BBC bulletins can be in no doubt that they have made a grave mistake in ignoring the economic forecasters of the OECD and elsewhere in the BBC canon of approved sources.

Take, for example, the series of reports launched on BBC Radio 4’s PM programme called Brexit Street, which is supposedly a typical ‘out’-voting area in Thornaby-on-Tees. The reality is that this is a hugely deprived inner city area with a highly atypical quota of asylum seekers. The purpose seems to be to show primarily that ‘out’ voters are bigoted, bitter, irrational xenophobes.

And what of the killing of a Polish man in a Harlow pizza parlour at the end of August? BBC reports immediately speculated that there was a fear that this was is was a racial attack triggered by Brexit – even though police had made no charges, and had only confirmed that they had not ruled out such motivation from their inquiries. John Sweeney muttered darkly on Newsnight that Nigel Farage might now have blood on his hands.

Such sensationalist reporting by the BBC gave European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker the ammunition to attack the Brexit vote and to insinuate it had unleashed a tide of racism.

James Harding has thus – as is usual for the BBC – ignored the elephant in the room. The BBC has never reported the EU impartially, fundamentally because they totally do not acknowledge or understand the case for ‘out’. Harding’s clumsy obfuscation confirms that – in spades.

Diane Abbot has reportedly asserted at the Labour Party Conference that those who voted ‘out’ were racists. How much has the BBC’s reporting supported her in coming to that conclusion?

Photo by German Embassy London

Newsnight uses poll to push ‘remain’

BBC Bias, EU Referendum, Newsnight | 4th July 2016 | by David Keighley

At the beginning of Newsnight on Friday night was a poll by Ipsos Mori about alleged post-vote attitudes to the EU referendum.

Presenter James O’Brien said that 56% of leavers and 76% of remainers thought negotiations would not yield a good ‘exit’ deal, 16% thought the UK would not actually leave (with 22% not knowing), and that ‘almost half’ of voters thought there should be a general election to vote on the ‘exit’ deal. The commentary linked to the 5% disc above, used in the graphics about the poll, suggested that significant numbers of ‘leave’ voters now wanted to change their minds – planting the idea that if there was a re-run, there might be a ‘remain’ vote.

The rest of the programme magnified this, suggested that ‘Brexit’ sentiment was closely linked with the Front National in France and further posited that, against the background of the uncertainties, the 48% who had voted ‘remain’ might now effectively be without representation.

After the poll intro, the next sequence of the programme investigated what was happening over the Labour and Conservative leadership struggles. Political editor Nick Watt concluded:

British politics is being refashioned right in front of our eyes. But even in the middle of a revolution, perhaps it will be the steadiest member of the crew who will guide us to the next stage.

O’Brien then reminded viewers that immediately after the referendum vote, Newsnight had visited a pub in Burnley to canvass opinions. He said that Nick Blakemore had re-visited the pub to find if there had been much change.

The opinions he gathered were:

Delighted with the poll outcome

Got to work together to make it work.

We are all in the same boat – not now leave or remain and must move forward

The UK has left

The UK was leaving but voters had to remember that many had voted remain

Friends who are on either side but not falling out.

England is not an easy touch – you cannot come here and take advantage of the country

Tired of paying out for people who think it a career option to be a dosser, get a council house and take, take, take. We are working men and are sick of this

A remain voter said:

I actually voted ‘In’ last week. The reason was because erm . . . I just feel that Britain has a massive role to play in the European Union and it doesn’t make sense for me for us to come out of that. I’m a second-generation Italian, so my mum and dad came over here. What I think the biggest thing is that . . . I was born here but all my friends around here in Burnley have no issue whatsoever with any foreign people coming to this country, because, as long as the foreign people that come here contribute, that is the main thing. The biggest problem this country has is any foreign people who come over here and grab from the state, I think that’s the biggest issue.

I voted leave because I want a say in the laws we make

I voted leave, but I am not sure if it was the right thing to do.

People are making laws that we don’t have a say over

There’s been a decline in living standards in the North of England, compared with, say, Basingstoke.

Anyone who is annoyed with the vote should get involved in politics.

If the left are to win ever again they have got to realise they have to respect the voice of normal working people.

We are going to get screwed either way.

The longest most prominent contribution was from a remain supporter who strongly supported immigration and said it made no sense for Britain to leave the EU. The reporter found no one who was equally eloquent in supporting the leave position. By contrast. the ‘leavers’ statements were staccato and fragmentary – they didn’t like scroungers, laws being made elsewhere or being taken for granted by people who thought they were smarter.

James O’Brien then turned to studio guest novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, a man he said was ‘responsible for a lyrical evocation of interwar England so powerful and convincing that it won a Booker prize’. He added that he was thus a literary poster boy for a multicultural Britain and full integration – and was worried that ‘Britain may be in some sort of mortal threat’.

Ishiguro said he thought that the claim was ‘melodramatic’, but there was a serious threat. The nation was now bitterly divided, was leaderless and anxious. He said that if he was a strategist for the ‘far right’ he would now be getting very excited; it was the best opportunity since the 1930s to push Britain towards neo Nazism racism. People had to show decent heart.

James O’Brien suggested that in this connection, there had been some ‘grim tales’ this week. Ishiguro agreed that he was shaken, but despite what had happened, he had faith in the essential decency of the country. He said he had grown up often as the only foreigner but the National Front and the BNP had never got a hold of the country – the UK did racism really badly. It was important, though, not to get complacent now, the decent part of the country needed something to rally around.

O’Brien responded:

….as you refer to in your piece, who voted to leave the European Union, and will be just chilled by the spectre that you portray as anybody on the Remain side is. It’s a challenge to really separate, isn’t it, the toxicity that seems to have been emboldened by the result and the people who will be just as alarmed by that emboldening as, as anybody else is. How, how can we do that?

Ishiguro said the majority of the people who voted leave were not racist…but some were. He wanted a petition from the leave side to say they were not in favour of the xenophobia and racism that was threatening to take over.

O’Brien asked if he had experienced any of that. He said not but said lots of people were really anxious, and there were reports that things that were not acceptable before were seeming to be so now. O’Brien asked if this included people being asked to go home. Ishiguro said the leave side needed to declare that they were not racist. O’Brien asked if this should include a hashtag. Ishiguro said he agreed it should. He then declared:

. . . you know, thing, I, I’m one of the people that would like to see a second referendum, not a replay of the last one. But I think we, what we lack now is a proper mandate for the new Prime Minister, whoever it is, on what sort of Brexit we are going to go for. And I think we need another . . . some sort of discussion for a referendum.

JO: (speaking over) And you, you’ve, you’ve pulled the pin on a second r— a second referendum grenade just as our time together comes to an end. So we shall, we shall have to leave it there . . .

O’Brien then introduced a sequence about France’s attitudes towards Brexit. He noted that growing numbers of people there might want a referendum. Gabriel Gatehouse’s first port of call was George Bertrand, who during the referendum campaign had appeared on Newsnight to say how strongly he opposed both the holding of the referendum and a UK exit. They had ended his ‘European dreams’. His first words in this report were:

I’m sad and angry. I always wanted Britain to be part of European dreams… The results for Britain are extremely complex difficult to manage. But it is not only a domestic issue, but as it concerns us too….We consider Britain as an exceptional country. As itself, the role it has played in two wars, the way democratic life was developed… At the same time, we were absolutely aware that Europe without Britain was not Europe. The English Parliamentary tradition has a very positive influence on the European Parliament started to evolve.

The report then contained a vox pop regretting that Britain was leaving. Gatehouse also spoke to three members of the Front National, who said they were pleased with the referendum result, and linked themselves to other anti-EU movements in Europe, including Ukip. He then spoke to Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National. She said:

It’s the same cocktail than for the Brexit in a way, it’s anti-immigrant feeling, because it’s an open door to immigration, refugees and possibly terrorism, so the second issue is insecurity, law and order. And the third dimension is anti-elites, the idea that the people who govern us, they are so far away, they don’t understand us, the little people. And they are corrupt.

Gatehouse said:

And here is a curious paradox. In a country with a proud, democratic tradition, many people feel disenfranchised. Sure, they can vote for a choice of parties and politicians, but many feel the politicians are all saying the same things, in a language they no longer understand. It’s not just France. In corridors of power across Europe, politicians, the centrist establishment, the people who by and large have governed this continent since the end of the Second World War, are suddenly realising that for a whole variety of different reasons, vast swathes of their electorate simply don’t believe in them anymore. It’s not that the centrists aren’t aware of the problem, they are. They just don’t seem to know what to do about it.

PIERRE LELLOUCH French Minister for Europe, 2009-10: People have a sense that they are losing the control of their nation. As a result of globalisation, the arrival of huge companies from the other side of the world, who are now controlling the economy. You are losing control of the economy, you are losing control of the people coming into your nation. A lot of poor whites consider they are losing money, they are paying for the newcomers. And I sense this anger all over the country here in France. And I’m worried about that. Because governments are . . . tend to . . . For example, right now, they are involved in legislation that has no impact on these issues but you know, but it’s like a theatre.

GG: You’re irrelevant?

PL: In many ways, yes. Because of lack of courage, essentially.

George Bertrand had the last words. He said:

Britain used to rule the world. Europe used to rule the world. That’s finished….. I’m angry because we are putting our respective security in danger and democracy in danger. In spite of the economic and social divisions in Europe, we are the most balanced part of the world. The most human part of the world, the most socially-advanced in the world. That could be jeopardised.

James O’Brien opened the final sequence by stressing very strongly that the 48% who had voted ‘remain’ found themselves with ‘absolutely nothing’. He asserted:

Politically your position is, in many ways, no stronger than if you’d won 0%. With all the Conservative leadership candidates now fully committed to Brexit and the winner of course guaranteed to govern, what will opposition even look like? And who will speak for the 48%?

He introduced his next guests, ‘journalist and broadcaster, Paul Mason, The Times columnist Phil Collins, and adviser to Nick Clegg, Polly McKenzie.’

Paul Mason suggested that the Labour party had scored a ‘fantastic success’ by knocking George Osborne away from fiscal rule. The task now was to push for more investment in business and tax cuts. Collins disagreed and said the reason for the change was the massive shock of leaving the EU. O’Brien suggested that something more fundamental than infighting and squabbles. McKenzie agreed:

I think something has to change, because as you said in your intro, there’s nobody who really represents the 48%, the people who voted for Remain. And we don’t even have a mandate for a government to negotiate our Brexit. As we were hearing earlier, we don’t know what kind of Brexit we want – a sort of economically sensible EEA-type strategy or, you know, full complete distance and we just cut ourselves off and float in the mid-Atlantic? And actually, unless there’s some sort of election or some sort of realignment of politics, nobody has a mandate to make that decision.

O’Brien asked what the alignment would look like. McKenzie said it was hard to see the Liberal Democrats leading it because they had only eight MPs. O’Brien noted that leader Tim Farron had committed to a campaign that would involve fighting to get back into the EU. McKenzie confirmed that this was the case and felt ‘very strongly represented by that’, but there was not enough support to build a new party. Collins suggested that if the Labour MPs who did not support Jeremy Corbyn broke away and formed a new party, that would be a great outcome. Paul Mason said that the ‘centrist politics’ that wanted to re-join the EU would have to be a new party because neither Conservatives or Labour would do that. McKenzie said something needed doing urgently in terms of renegotiation, but at the moment there was a Cabinet office team of only three engaged in it. Collins said the referendum vote did not give a mandate for anything – it was only to leave.

ANALYSIS

What were the aims of this programme? Clearly a central thread was the Newsnight-commissioned opinion poll. The findings were projected by James O’Brien to suggest primarily that the referendum had raised more questions than it answered, and that many ‘leave’ voters were now, in any case changing their minds.

The sequence from Burnley provided a range of opinions about what people had voted for and what they were expecting in the wake of the ‘out’ vote, but gave most prominence to a ‘remain’ voter whose contribution was that Britain still had a big part to play in the EU, and that immigration was vital to the economy.

Following on from that James O’Brien interviewed Remains of the Day author Yazua Ishiguro, who he said was very able and a strong supporter of multiculturalism. O’Brien worked with him – he asked no adversarial questions – in developing several ideas, including that a second referendum might be necessary, that the danger was that ‘the ‘leave’ vote would be a lever for the far right to introduce Nazi-style policies and that intolerance would increase.

The sequence from France gave pride of place to George Bertrand, who had helped take the UK into the EEC and now was angry because the UK had voted to leave. He claimed that this jeopardised the EU’s achievements and Europe’s place in the world. Gabriel Gatehouse also drew attention, as the main focus of his reporting, to that Marine le Pen, leader of the front National, and her supporters strongly supported Brexit and saw it as a means of reinforcing their own position.

The final section was predicated upon O’Brien’s statement that 48% of the electorate were left with nothing by the ‘leave’ vote. He steered the discussion with the three supporters of remain so that they were given the opportunity to say that Brexit should not happen without a further election and that a new political party was required to represent the ‘remain’ side. He also gave a platform for former Newsnight economics editor Mason to argue extensively for tax cuts and to claim that the decision by George Osborne to, in effect, end austerity was a victory for the left.

In overall terms, therefore, the programme was focused through the prism of the findings of the opinion poll on giving five ardent ‘remain’ supporters a platform for suggesting that Brexit must not actually happen and was a disaster for the EU and the UK. It was a blatantly one-sided presentation and appeared to be a continuation of what looks like Newsnight’s deliberate campaign to reverse the referendum verdict.

Another major issue was the programme’s use of the opinion poll.

The BBC’s editorial guidelines contain clear advice about the use of such polls. It is stated:

Opinion polls, surveys, questionnaires, phone and online votes are useful and fruitful ways of listening to our audiences. However, when we report them, the audience must be able to trust that the research – and our reporting of it – is robust. To avoid misleading the audience, we should be rigorous in using precise language and in our scrutiny of the methodology.

We must also avoid commissioning any of our own research that could suggest a BBC position on a particular policy or issue.

There were three direct infringements of the guidelines.

First, Newsnight does increasingly have a position on the referendum result. It is on a mission to present as much evidence as possible to undermine it. The poll was framed to amplify that message, to show that voters wanted a fresh chance to vote in a general election, and had changed their minds.

Second, in the wake of the referendum, there is clear evidence that in this arena, polls are not reliable. Only two of the surveys published close to polling day predicted a ‘leave’ vote. One poll gave a 10% advantage to ‘remain’ and Ipsos Mori (Newsnight’s pollster) 4%. In the wake of the referendum polls, Populus has issued a guidance note spelling out that, in effect, there is a huge question mark over how the lack of accuracy can be addressed. They state:

Having now studied turnout at the referendum and compared it to our analysis of the demographic composition of the voting electorate at previous referendums and general elections, we have concluded that turnout patterns are so different that a demographically based propensity-to-vote model is unlikely ever to produce an accurate picture of turnout other than by sheer luck.

We will continue to examine these methodological challenges in producing accurate snapshots and predictions of how the country will vote. We will not publish another such poll until we are confident that it is right.

In that context of uncertainty, it seems extraordinary that Newsnight decided to commission a poll at all. The suspicion must be that the editors were desperate to find another way of showing that voters were now unsure about the result, and projected the findings as an ‘objective’ and reliable verification of that. Nothing of what O’Brien said gave a warning that there was a huge question mark over the reliability of such polls. This was a direct breach of the editorial guidelines.

Third – and even worse, perhaps – two separate statistics of polling information were conflated so as to overemphasise the numbers who said they would change their vote.

92% of the Ipsos Mori respondents said they would not change their minds if asked to vote in a second referendum (with 4% saying they would change their vote, 3% saying they didn’t know, and 1% saying they wouldn’t vote)

Newsnight presented this 92% figure in the graphic shown above. However, O’Brien then introduced an additional statistic: that 5% of Remain voters and 2% of Leave voters said they would now change their vote. Two smaller circles were duly placed on the chart to reflect this, despite these numbers having no direct correlation to the initial 92% figure. Therefore, the graphics and commentary suggested 7% wishing to change their votes, whereas the Ipsos Mori data itself had given a figure of just 4%.

Further, the two smaller circles of 5% and 2% cannot even be fairly compared to each other, given that more voted to Leave in the referendum than voted to Remain. The only way to have fairly reflected this difference would have been to have introduced a second chart, showing the overall numbers of Leave and Remain voters, and how potential shifts in voting intention might have affected the totals.

A closer inspection of the Ipsos Mori data also reveals that, to produce the 5% and 2% figures, two responses were combined: those who would ‘definitely’ change their vote, and those who ‘probably’ change their vote.

Had Newsnight focused only on those who were certain to change their votes, then the chart and commentary would have been even less striking: only 1.1% of those polled would definitely change their Leave vote, and just 0.4% would definitely change their Remain vote – a far less dramatic statistic than the one selected.

Put another way – bringing in the unweighted sample size of 935 voters who were actual consulted to reach these findings – only FIVE people told Ipsos Mori that they would definitely change their mind from ‘leave’ and two people said they would definitely switch from ‘remain’. On that highly tenuous basis, Newsnight told its viewers, in effect that 5% of total ‘leave’ vote of 17.4m was considering changing sides. This was a preposterous extrapolation.

Is there other evidence that Newsnight is in such campaigning mode? The News-watch post about the previous Friday’s edition is one instance. Further examples of such bias are on the Is the BBC Biased? website.

Of all this evidence, perhaps the most devastating is Evan Davis’s hugely negative treatment of ‘leave supporter Crispin Blunt MP last Thursday evening (30/6) in his capacity of chair of the Commons foreign affairs select committee. Blunt argued that it was likely that the UK could get a positive deal in the Brexit trade negotiations with the EU, and would also be able to influence free movement of peoples. Analysis of the transcript indicates that Davis tried extraordinarily hard to prevent Blunt making his points. The full exchange is below. It was 1,420 words. Evan Davis spoke 624 words (44%) and Crispin Blunt 796 words (56%). There were 37 interruptions, at a rate of six per minute, among the highest recorded by news-watch in an equivalent interview.

Transcript of BBC2, Newsnight, 1^st July, EU Referendum, 10.30pm (Extract on Polling)

JAMES O’BRIEN: For once, the clichés seem almost inadequate. It really was a political earthquake. We really are in uncharted waters and we really do have no idea what happens next. So, the search for clarity, and maybe even some certainty, is underway. And while it’s a little previous to suggest that much dust has settled, a week has now passed since the Referendum result was revealed, so we have, at least, had some time to consider its possible ramifications. Time now, then, obviously, for a poll examining where we were, where we are and where we think we might be going with Brexit. It’s thrown up a few surprises and some rather bad news for anyone hoping that they’d seen the back of the ballot box for a while. Have you had enough of voting yet? Apparently not. In fact almost half of voters polled said Britain should hold another general election before the UK starts to negotiate Brexit, so that each party can set out its own vision for life outside the EU. And maybe this is why. 59% told us they were not confident in Britain’s political leaders getting the best possible Brexit deal for Britain. That rises to 76% of Remain voters. And what about buyer’s remorse? All those voters who supposedly want to change their minds? Well, maybe not. 92% of respondents said they would definitely vote the same way. But of them, 5% of Leave voters did say they would now change their vote, compared to just 2% of Remain voters. And finally, imagine if this all just went away. Well, more than a third of voters they think it might. 22% said they don’t know if Britain will actually leave the EU and 16% think the UK will actively defy the Brexit vote and find a way to stay in. Of course, that’s only part of the post-Ref picture. The real action is unfolding at Westminster where just about everything is up for grabs on both sides of the House.

Transcript of BBC2, Newsnight, 29^th June 2016, Interview with Crispin Blunt, 10.49pm

EVAN DAVIS: Joining me now, Conservative MP, and chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Crispin Blunt, who has declared he’s backing Boris Johnson, a very good evening to you.

CRISPIN BLUNT: Good evening.

ED: (speaking over) You were just explaining something to me, you’re not really worried about the negotiation at all, because you think if it all fails we’re still in an okay situation?

CB: Well, the Foreign Affairs Committee looked at this and we published our report on the 26 April, I suggest people read it, erm, because it is highly likely our European partners are not going to be able to agree on a negotiating strategy between themselves. They have to . . . and if they . . . if there’s qualified minority blocking a deal, either those people who want to deal er, er, positively with UK or those who want to be seen to be . . .

ED: (speaking over) Punish . . .

CB: . . . to punish us, er, then that doesn’t work, and equally, the European Parliament has to approve this as well . . .

ED: (speaking over) Right so, if, if, if all of that . . .

CB: . . . and the mood there is . .

ED: (speaking over) fails, then, then . . .

CB: So . . . then, er, we go to . . . have to sell into the European single market, on most-favoured nation terms of WTO rules, tariffs at about an average of 3% – 10% in some areas, such as on cars and things . . .

ED: (speaking over) Your point is that is not the end of the world . . .

CB: That is . . .

ED: (speaking over) That’s perfectly (words unclear)

CB: (speaking over) And that’s how we sell into the . . .

ED: (speaking over) Okay.

CB: . . . United States. But no, but it’s better than that, Evan, because we then, er, get control of immigration, we have control of free movement of people, and we then don’t have free movement of . . .

ED: (speaking over) Okay.

CB: . . . labour into the UK, we don’t have to pay £20 billion . . .

ED: (speaking over) No, well that, look . . .

CB: . . . into the EU budget, okay, we then get £10 billion back, but we can at least decide where that £20 billion gets spent. It gets even better than that. We are then in a position where we are regulating our own market, and where there are issues . . .

ED: (interrupting) Okay, so I understand, you basically think the backstop, if everything else fails, is, is, is, not to bad . . .

CB: (speaking over) I think people should appreciate actually just how strong . . .

ED: (speaking over) What, what, Boris Johnson, can I just ask you . . .

CB: . . . the British hand is.

ED: (speaking over) I want to ask you what you understood by what Boris Johnson wrote in The Telegraph the other day, this line he wrote about British people would be able to go and work in the EU, live, travel, study, buy homes and settle down there. What do you think he meant by that, when he wrote that was going to be the outcome of the negotiation?

CB: What . . . I don’t, I don’t know what . . .

ED: (speaking over) You don’t know?

CB: I don’t know, I don’t know . . .

ED: (speaking over) (words unclear)

CB: I don’t know what, well, well . . .

ED: (speaking over) Can you, can you foresee any outcome . . .

CB: (speaking over) I don’t know what Boris, er, meant by that, there is plainly going to be . . .

ED: (speaking over) You don’t know what he . . . can you see any outcome where that, if that happens . . .

CB: (speaking over) Yeah, well, if you look . . .

ED: . . . and we don’t . . .

CB: (speaking over) Well . . .

ED: We can restrict them . . .

CB: Can we go and live in the United States if we have the means and ability to do so, if we get a gre— . . .

ED: (speaking over) Is that what he meant when he said that? Is that what he meant?

CB: (speaking under) a green card. Er . . .

ED: I can’t go and live in the United States . . .

CB: (speaking over) But . . . but . . .

ED: I have to get a job and get a green card.

CB: Er, and get a green card. Now that may be . . .

ED: (interrupting) Sorry, I’ll tell you why I’m pushing this, you’re supporting him, he’s written this thing which is . . . appears to imply ‘We will stop them coming here, but we will have the right to go there’ . . .

CB: No, and if that’s . . .

ED: (speaking over) He’s just been in the middle of a campaign, he ought to know whether that is achievable or not, and I’m asking you whether . . .

CB: Well, I, I . . .

ED: . . . you think it is achievable?

CB: (speaking over) Well . . . er, my view is that, er, we will come, have to come to a deal about how people move between the United Kingdom and the rest of the European Union.

ED: Can you see . . .

CB: And we go into those . . .

ED: (speaking over) that they will allow us freedom of movement without us allowing them freedom of movement? Because that is what your candidate . . .

CB: (speaking over) No, and that’s why . . .

ED: . . . from Prime Minister . . .

CB: That’s why . . .

ED: . . . who is meant to be an expert on this, having run a campaign on it has just (word unclear due to speaking over ‘written’?)

CB: (speaking over) Well, if you could . . . I’m quite certain that everyone is now going to disinter everything that Boris has said, because there’s obviously a significant campaign to try and . . .

ED: (interrupting) What?! Is this unreasonable, to take something he wrote in article for which he was paid several thousand pounds, at the end of a campaign, he wrote something that was reassuring . . .

CB: Well . . .

ED: . . . about what would be the position for the British, that appears, to most commentators, utterly incoherent . . .

CB: (speaking over) There is a . . .

ED: (speaking over) Does that not worry you about the candidate you’re supporting?

CB: There’s . . . uncertainty all over the place, erm, amongst the candidates, in certainly, in, certainly in the media, please let me . . . to finish this point, and it is extremely important to the national interest now, that we actually get some, as much certainty as possible about what the bottom line is for the United Kingdom. The bottom line . . . for the United Kingdom (fragments of words, or words unclear due to speaking over)

ED: (speaking over) You’ve explained the bottom line, which is . . .

CB: And that position . . .

ED: (speaking over) But if we take the bottom line . . .

CB: (speaking over) Wait, wait, well, well, hold on, hold on (fragment of word, or word unclear due to speaking over)

ED: (speaking over) Will I be able to live, travel, study, buy a home, settle down in France, do you think? Under your bottom line?

CB: Well no, if the, if the . . .

ED: (speaking over) Right . . .

CB: . . . if the negotiations (fragments of words, unclear due to speaking over)

ED: (speaking over) Right. So how can Boris give me that reassurance in his article?

CB: Well, because that’s no doubt what he is seeking to achieve. And it is obviously in the mutual interest of both United Kingdom and our European partners that that is the case, in exactly the same way . . .

ED: (exhales or laughing?)

CB: Evan, in exactly the same way as it is in our mutual interest that the tariff regime, particularly in the interests of our European partners, that if they sell nearly twice as many manufactured goods to was as we sell to them, that they would want to see those tariffs reduced.

ED: Can I give you a quickfire round, because there are some issues, which I know . . . well, do you think, immigration from non-EU countries, if Boris, your candidate wins, will go up . . . or not . . .

CB: (speaking over) (fragment of word, unclear)

ED: . . . when we have our new immigration regime?

CB: (fragment of word, unclear)

ED: Because promises were made to Asian communities that it would be easier to get relatives in. Do you think immigration will go up or down?

CB: Well, my view is that we should regulate immigration from outside the United Kingdom (sic?) consistently across, so people face the same rules . . .

ED: (speaking over) More or less from outside the EU?

CB: Both the regulation should be the same from (words unclear due to speaking over)

ED: (speaking over) Okay, you’re not going to answer that.

CB: (fragments of words, or words unclear)

ED: (speaking over) You’re not answering it.

CB: No Evan, this is, Evan, this is rather more serious, this trying to score . . .

ED: (speaking over) I’m not, these are just really basic questions . . .

CB: (speaking over) to try to . . .

ED: . . . which have not been answered in the campaign . . .

CB: (speaking over) But you know, you know perfectly well . . .

ED: (speaking over) and which your candidate is now going to stand for Prime Minister . . .

CB: (speaking over) But . . . but you know, but you know perfectly well that, er, the numbers of people that come into the United Kingdom are not necessarily, depending on what system you set up, is then going to depend . . .

ED: (speaking over) Right . . .

CB: . . . how many people come into the United Kingdom, so if you put . . .

ED: (speaking over) So maybe . . .

CB: . . . so if you put a . . . cap on the number of visas you’re going to allow . . .

ED: (speaking over) Right.

CB: . . . that’s one way of controlling it. Are you going to seek control . . .

ED: (interrupting) So it can go a lot of ways . . .

CB: . . . by the number of, (fragments of words, unclear) by . . .

ED: (speaking over) Any, any . . .

CB: . . . by issuing green cards.

ED: (speaking over) Any suggestion made in the campaign . . .

CB: And finally . . . and finally, we are going to have control over this. So we are then going to be . . . do the very important business of trying to protect British unskilled and semi-skilled labour from having to compete with people who have professional qualifications, from Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, or indeed, anywhere else in the world. That’s why they are not allowed into the United Kingdom (words unclear due to speaking over)

ED: (speaking over) That is a very long way of saying . . .

CB: . . . outside the European Union.

ED: . . . you don’t know whether immigration will go up or not. Crispin Blunt (laughter in voice) sorry we have to leave it there, thanks very much indeed. Thanks.

Transcript of BBC2, Newsnight, 1^st July, EU Referendum, 10.30pm

Opening Montage

Music with the lyrics ‘The world turned upside down’ repeated throughout.

DAVID CAMERON: I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain that steers our country to its next destination.

EMILY MAITLIS: When you voted leave, was it about the EU, was it picking the government, was about change of any kind? Or was it about something I haven’t mentioned?

UNNAMED FEMALE: It’s everything.

UNNAMED FEMALE: Everything.

EM: Right.

HILARY BENN: I no longer had confidence in his leadership.

ANGELA EAGLE: I feel that I’ve served in the best way I can.

REPORTER: Here at Westminster in the last few minutes there are more Labour resignations, three Shadow ministers . . .

UNNAMED FEMALE: He doesn’t need them shadow cabinets, get an . . . get an election and he’ll get in.

JEREMY CORBYN: Seumas, I’m not sure this is a great idea, is it?

DC: And I thought I was having a bad day ! (Laughter)

JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER: You were fighting for the exit. The British people voted in favour of the exit, why are you here?

THERESA MAY: My pitch is very simple, I’m Theresa May and I think I’m the best person to be Prime Minister of this country.

VICTORIA DERBYSHIRE: Tom, Tom, I’m really sorry to interrupt, but we’re just hearing that Michael Gove is preparing to announce his candidacy as well.

JOURNALIST: What is your to Michael Gove? What is your to Michael Gove?

BORIS JOHNSON: I have . . . concluded that person cannot be me.

MICHAEL GOVE: I came reluctantly but firmly to the conclusion that I should stand and Boris should stand aside.

BJ: I cannot, unfortunately, get on with doing what I want to do, so it will be up to someone else now. I wish them every possible success.

Nick Watt talks about plans to ‘ease Jeremy Corbyn out of the door’, and allow him to resign with dignity.

What’s the latest? Nick, you have found out about a plan to help ease Jeremy Corbyn out of the door?

NICK WATT: Yes, all the signs from the Shadow Chancellor today John McDonald work that Jeremy Corbyn is not going anywhere and he’s going to stay. But I understand there was a delegation of Shadow Cabinet ministers yesterday who tried and failed to meet Jeremy Corbyn to suggest a plan to allow him to resign with dignity. They were suggesting that a commission could be set up over the summer and that would in trench some of his ideas about how you democratise the Labour Party and would also push on the party to commit to some of his core policies on inequality. If that could happen and some of the leadership contenders could agree to that, he would perhaps pre-announced his retirement and he would go after the Labour conference. What is really interesting about this is that people like John McDonald are very wary of this because they are scared that the moment he gives up the power, that is it for the left. But I understand that some members on the left who were in that room last year when his candidacy was approved that they thought with great reluctance and sadness that this may be the wise thing to do because they fear that the party could divide.

JO: I hesitate to ask, but more bad news for the Labour leader tonight?

NW: Yes, an interesting YouGov poll of Unite members, whose general secretary is one of Jeremy Corbyn’s most ardent supporters and this shows that 75% of people who voted Labour in the general election last year believe that Jeremy Corbyn will not be Prime Minister. It wouldn’t surprise me if Jeremy Corbyn’s opponent in the Labour Party picked up on this to challenge one of his central arguments. That Central argue it is, I may not have any support at Westminster but I do have support in the wider labour movement. Important health warning, election day to admit that YouGov were not able to do the full weighting you would normally expect because they do not know the full and exact demographic breakdown of Unite members. But we shouldn’t forget that there is a contest to choose the next Prime Minister of this country, so what I thought I would do is take a look at how that is going and also see how the front runner, Theresa May is getting on. (package report) Who would have believed it? The plodder of the Cabinet who issues the political gossip and the party circuit is emerging as the front runner in the Tory leadership contest.

DOMINIC GRIEVE Theresa May supporter: She brings to her work eight professionalism, dedication and hard work, a willingness to confront difficult problems, and that may be in great measure due to the fact that she is a woman. Which is probably a positive at the present time in my view in terms of our national politics.

NW: There is an unmistakable buzz around the Home Secretary and her rivals are concerned. 36 hours ago, Boris Johnson appeared to be the slam dunk candidate in the Tory leadership contest. After his former friend Michael Gove ended his lifetime’s ambition to be Prime Minister, the question tonight is whether the Theresa May juggernaut is unstoppable. Like it or loathe it, Theresa May is now defining this leadership contest and even influencing wider government policy.

GEORGE OSBORNE: It’s incredibly important we maintain fiscal credibility…

NW: George Osborne indicated today that he would abandon his plan to achieve an overall budget surplus, a day after the Home Secretary said she would do just that. And at his campaign launch, Michael Gove had his sights set on Theresa May when he said that the next Prime Minister must be a Brexit supporter. But Michael Gove knows he has to overcome the perception that he is guilty of a double act of treachery against two old friends, David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

PAUL GOODMAN Editor, Conservative Home: As we sit here today, you have to conclude that it looks as though he has gone over the Reichenbach falls with Boris Johnson, taken him over the falls but done some damage to his own reputation, who was previously above the fray, but he’s now gone down into the marketplace and has been swinging punches like the rest of them.

NW: Fans of the Justice Secretary say he has the brains and personal touch to make it.

ANNE-MARIE TREVELYAN Michael Gove supporter: He is a powerhouse of a man, an intellectual I’ve known for 30 years, I’ve watched him develop. He’s a radical reformer and a man who has always led his politics by conviction. He’s the one who persuaded me to in politics. He has the same vision for our country that I do, which is that we can really bring everyone together.

NW: But momentum appears to be building up behind Andrei led ‘ — Andrea Ledsom. Perhaps she could become the main leadership challenger to Theresa May.

PG: Candidates with novelty tend to do well in leadership elections. No one had heard of John Major in 1990, William Hague was a religiously junior figure in 1997. Iain Duncan Smith had been a Maastricht rebel. So Andrea Ledsom could come from the outside to give Theresa May a run for her money.

NW: Some of Theresa May’s supporters hope this contest could be over by next week. They are nervous that if this goes to the second stage, decided by grassroots Tory members, the support for the Remain side could count against her.

PG: The main test for Theresa May is whether or not she could persuade that Tory members should elect her when she was four Remain and the majority evidence was that a majority of them were for Leave. There is a form in Tory leadership contests being about Europe.

NW: British politics is being refashioned right in front of our eyes. But even in the middle of a revolution, perhaps it will be the steadiest member of the crew who will guide us to the next stage.

Full transcription:

JO: We’re off to the pub now. The one in Burnley next where, you’ll recall, we canvassed the immediate post-vote feelings pretty comprehensively. So, have they changed much? Will feuding friends forgive and forget? In a moment, Nick Blakemore will find out, but first a quick reminder of how those Brexit campaigners reacted when they found out the result.

TANYA THOMPSON Vote Leave Activist (Unnamed here): I’m over the moon, I don’t know what to say. We did it. Everybody woke up in time. Everybody listened. Everybody understands, yes, it’s going to be rough at the beginning. But we’ve done it.

JO: So, a week on, how are they feeling? Just to warn you, you may hear some strong language in the background of Nick’s film.

UNNAMED FEMALE: We’ve got to work together to make this work.

UNNAMED MALE: It’s like anything, you either go for it or you are left behind.

VOX POP FEMALE 2: We are all in the same boat. We now move forward. We are not Leave and Remain, we are United Kingdom.

VOX POP MALE: (speaking over) Leave. No, we are Leave, we’ve left.

VPF2: We are leaving, but we have to remember that a large percentage of this country voted Remain, and we don’t feel that way.

VPM: (speaking over)(words unclear) He’s Remain – I’m Out, aren’t I – are me and you falling out?

VOX POP MALE2: No.

VPF2: No.

VPM: We might be in ten minutes, like, but you know . . .

VOX POP MALE 3: This time we will just carry on. As it were. We just want people to know that England is not an easy touch. You know what I mean? You can’t just come here and take, take, take. To enjoy the advantages of this country, you’ve got to contribute. It’s as simple as that.

NICK BLAKEMORE: Why do you think Burnley voted for leave?

VPM3: They’re tired of paying out for people who think it’s a career option to just be a dosser and get a council house and take, take, take. And we’re getting sick of this, you know, you look around, every one of us here are hard working men and that’s what we’re sick of.

VOX POP MALE 4: I actually voted In last week. The reason was because erm . . . I just feel that Britain has a massive role to play in the European Union and it doesn’t make sense for me for us to come out of that. I’m a second-generation Italian, so my mum and dad came over here. What I think the biggest thing is that . . . I was born here but all my friends around here in Burnley have no issue whatsoever with any foreign people coming to this country, because, as long as the foreign people that come here contribute, that is the main thing. The biggest problem this country has is any foreign people who come over here and grab from the state, I think that’s the biggest issue.

VOX POP MALE 5: Did you vote Leave in the referendum?

VOX POP MALE 6: (words unclear) Did you?

VPM5: I did, definitely. You know why? Because I want a say over the laws that are made.

VOX POP MALE 6: I voted Leave which the majority of people round here did. I’m not sure if it were the right thing or the wrong thing, we will soon find out.

VPM5: People are making laws now that we don’t even vote over. That’s my biggest gripe.

VPM6: You could definitely say that we’ve seen a decline in our living standards, especially in the north-west. The North of England. I mean, I have family who live down south, like Basingstoke, and you go down there and it’s like a different country.

VPM 5: So, we talk about how it’s . . . what’s happened down south compared to what’s happened in the north-west, but if you think about it, we, we now have a say over where that money goes. And I’d say to anyone who is annoyed about this referendum, annoyed that we voted to leave and they wanted to remain, get involved in politics right now because at this moment in time it’s the biggest change you can make.

VPM6: I would say that if that is going to be a left wing ever again, they’ve got to realise that they’re not the super intelligent people that they think they are. They have to respect the voice of normal working people. And we’re not stupid.

BARMAID: I see the pros and cons, either way, to be honest with you, I think, putting it bluntly, we are going to get screwed, either way!

JO: Joining me now is the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, the Japanese-born, raised in Surrey and, and as the author of The Remains of the Day, the man responsible for a lyrical evocation of interwar England so powerful and convincing that it won the Booker Prize and was made into a famous film. Kazuo, I mention those three parts of your past because they paint you, in a way, as a sort of literary poster boy for a multi-cultural Britain and full integration, and yet (exhales) you write in Today’s Financial Times of your fears that that sort of Britain may be in some sort of mortal threat. Why?

KAZU ISHIGURO: Mortal threat may be putting it a little melodramatically but I think this is very serious, you know, in my whole life time here, I have . . . I don’t think I’ve felt this anxious. I mean, the nation is very bitterly divided. It is leaderless, it is very anxious. Erm, if I . . . if I was a strategist for the far right now, I would be getting very excited, you know, this is, this is probably the best opportunity since the 1930s to push Britain towards some kind of neo-Nazi racism, and I think that we have got to . . . All the decent people in this country, and I mean both, people on both sides of the referendum divide, have got to rally around some sort of decent heart of, of Britain, and I think that’s decent heart . . . I don’t doubt that decent heart, you know . . .

JO: Not even a little?

KI: I . . .

JO: There’s been some grim, grim tales this week.

KI: I was, I was, I was shaken, I was a firm Remain person, you know, and I was shaken, like a lot of people. Er, but in the end I, you know, I have . . . I have a faith about the essential decency of this country. I speak both as someone who grew up as the only visible foreigner at school, I was always the only foreign boy at school, the only foreign kid in the community, over the years I have lived in various parts of Britain, when very large numbers of immigrants came from the Caribbean, Africa, the Asian subcontinent, the Caribbean, during a time of enormous economic turmoil in the 1970s and 1980s, people like the National Front and the BNP have never gained a hold in this country. You know, I think . . . and just as it was in the first half of the 20th Century, basically, I know, and I can tell from my perspective, everything I know about this country, is that it is essentially a very decent, tolerant country, it does racism really badly, even worse than football!

JO: (laughs) (words unclear) a part of the country is doing quite well.

KI: And when fascism was rampaging across Europe, you know, in the first half the 20th century, it couldn’t get a foothold here. But, I think this is . . . we shouldn’t be complacent now. And I think the country does need to . . . the decent part of the country needs something to rally around.

JO: Well, let’s try and identify what that may be, but of course, there’ll be plenty of people watching this, as you well know, and as you refer to in your piece, who voted to leave the European Union, and will be just chilled by the spectre that you portray as anybody on the Remain side is. It’s a challenge to really separate, isn’t it, the toxicity that seems to have been emboldened by the result and the people who will be just as alarmed by that emboldening as, as anybody else is. How, how can we do that?

KI: I absolutely believe that, you know, the majority of the people who voted leave are not racist . . .

JO: Of course.

KI: Some are. But, you know, just at a local level, I would like to see . . . I would like to see some kind of campaign declaration, a petition, I can’t do it, I am from the Remain camp, people from the Leave camp, I’d like them to clearly say that they are against the kind of xenophobia and racism that is threatening to take over.

JO: Have you experienced any?

KI: Not personally, no, no, just, just reading . . . I mean, there are a lot of people very anxious, you know, and we’ve heard reports of, just, you know, things that weren’t acceptable before, seeming to be acceptable now.

JO: (speaking over) People being told to go home (words unclear due to speaking over)

KI: (speaking over) I think yes, yeah, exactly . . . it’s at that level at the moment, you know . . . I . . . I don’t know how deep it goes, but I would like to see the people from the Leave camp just clearly . . . isolate the racists, you know, by saying, ‘This isn’t us.’ You know, I would even offer them a slogan, you know “Leave Racism”, you know, you know hashtag whatever . . .

JO: It needs a hashtag.

KI: Let’s just, let’s just try and win back the tone of this, this thing. At a deeper level, at a deeper kind of . . .

JO: Hmm.

KI: . . . you know, thing, I, I’m one of the people that would like to see a second referendum, not a replay of the last one. But I think we, what we lack now is a proper mandate for the new Prime Minister, whoever it is, on what sort of Brexit we are going to go for. And I think we need another . . . some sort of discussion for a referendum.

JO: (speaking over) And you, you’ve, you’ve pulled the pin on a second r— a second referendum grenade just as our time together comes to an end. So we shall, we shall have to leave it there . . .

KI: Okay.

JO: Kazuo Ishiguro many thanks indeed.

KI: (speaking over) Thank you very much.

JO: Of course, the referendum shockwaves reach much further than the shores of these islands. And few countries have been watching events here more closely than France. One of the original architects of the Common Market and, of course, long a historical obstacle to the UK’s membership, the country today hosts a growing strain of Gallic Euroscepticism and may be developing an appetite for what has inevitably been dubbed Frexit. Newsnight’s Gabriel Gatehouse has been taking a breath of French air to find out how events on this side of the Channel have played out over there.

UNNAMED MALE SPEAKER (GEORGE BERTRAND?): I’m sad and angry. I always wanted Britain to be part of European dreams.

GABRIEL GATEHOUSE: : It may look like life as normal. Paris in summertime. Cafes, strikes, the odd riot. But make no mistake, Brexit was an earthquake. The old Europe has changed.

VOX POP MALE: I was like, no, no! You can’t do that! We have a future together.

UNNAMED FEMALE (MARINE LE PEN?)On the side of the far right, it has come as a divine surprise.

UNNAMED MALE: One has to react very quickly because as a disease it is very profound.

GG: In the run-up to the referendum, Newsnight met George Bertrand, one of the founding fathers of the European Union. Brexit, he believes, is a disaster.

GEORGE BERTRAND: The results for Britain are extremely complex difficult to manage. But it is not only a domestic issue, but as it concerns us too.

GG: Mr Bertrand played a prominent role in shepherding Britain into the common market. And so, for him, it’s personal.

GB: We consider Britain as an exceptional country. As itself, the role it has played in two wars, the way democratic life was developed… At the same time, we were absolutely aware that Europe without Britain was not Europe. The English Parliamentary tradition has a very positive influence on the European Parliament started to evolve.

GG: Today, in France, an unpopular centre-left government is trying to force through reforms to the labour code. It’s not going well. The French, of course, are no strangers to this kind of labour protest. But it does feel now that there is a flight from the centre to the left and to the right. On the left, they see the EU as part of a neoliberal project which they blame for austerity, inequality and rising unemployment. And yet even here, some are dismayed by Brexit.

VOX POP MALE: OK, Europe, us, it exists. It’s shit, but we can’t, as we say in French, we can’t throw away the baby with the water of the bath.

GG: The baby out with the bath water, yes we say the same in England.

VPM: Yes, we can’t do that.

GG: In France, discontent with the political establishment is rising. The chief beneficiaries are not on the left but on the right. The Front National was once a fringe movement, the preserve of ageing ex-colonialists bitter about the loss of empire. No longer. Like the left, young FN supporters rail against globalisation, but for them, Brexit is a cause for celebration.

VOX POP FEMALE: The British have opened the door and I hope they have opened it for us too and for all the other peoples of Europe as well.

VOX POP MALE 2: It’s a strong message, an historic message. It’s the most important event since the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s very galvanising.

VPF: In every country, we see the rise of parties with patriotic, anti-globalisation agendas. We don’t agree with all of them. We don’t agree with everything Podemos say. We were very disappointed by what happened in Greece. We are interested in UKIP, we are interested in the Northern League, Alternative fur Deutschland.

GG: Polls suggest that the Front National could win the presidency next year. The polls also show a rise in Eurosceptic sentiment. And the Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, has promised a referendum on Frexit.

MARINE LE PEN: It’s the same cocktail than for the Brexit in a way, it’s anti-immigrant feeling, because it’s an open door to immigration, refugees and possibly terrorism, so the second issue is insecurity, law and order. And the third dimension is anti-elites, the idea that the people who govern us, they are so far away, they don’t understand us, the little people. And they are corrupt.

GG: And here is a curious paradox. In a country with a proud, democratic tradition, many people feel disenfranchised. Sure, they can vote for a choice of parties and politicians, but many feel the politicians are all saying the same things, in a language they no longer understand. It’s not just France. In corridors of power across Europe, politicians, the centrist establishment, the people who by and large have governed this continent since the end of the Second World War, are suddenly realising that for a whole variety of different reasons, vast swathes of their electorate simply don’t believe in them anymore. It’s not that the centrists aren’t aware of the problem, they are. They just don’t seem to know what to do about it.

PIERRE LELLOUCH French Minister for Europe, 2009-10: People have a sense that they are losing the control of their nation. As a result of globalisation, the arrival of huge companies from the other side of the world, who are now controlling the economy. You are losing control of the economy, you are losing control of the people coming into your nation. A lot of poor whites consider they are losing money, they are paying for the newcomers. And I sense this anger all over the country here in France. And I’m worried about that. Because governments are . . . tend to . . . For example, right now, they are involved in legislation that has no impact on these issues but you know, but it’s like a theatre.

GG: You’re irrelevant?

PL: In many ways, yes. Because of lack of courage, essentially.

GB: Britain used to rule the world. Europe used to rule the world. That’s finished.

GG: Europe is in the grip of a malaise. For some, Brexit presents an opportunity for renewal. For others, it is a dangerous gamble.

GB: I’m angry because we are putting our respective security in danger and democracy in danger. In spite of the economic and social divisions in Europe, we are the most balanced part of the world. The most human part of the world, the most socially-advanced in the world. That could be jeopardised.

JO: Lose by 4% of the vote in a General Election and you find yourself in strong Opposition with a fighting chance of halting legislation and embarrassing the Government. Win 48% of the vote in a Referendum and you find yourself with absolutely nothing. Politically your position is, in many ways, no stronger than if you’d won 0%. With all the Conservative leadership candidates now fully committed to Brexit and the winner of course guaranteed to govern, what will opposition even look like? And who will speak for the 48%? Some suggest we’re approaching a fundamental redrawing of traditional party politics but few are prepared to predict what it might look like. Joining me now to survey the scene are, the journalist and broadcaster Paul Mason, The Times columnist Phil Collins, and adviser to Nick Clegg, Polly McKenzie. We’ll get onto the highfalutin stuff imminently, but I’d like to begin by asking you all a very simple question, who’s in the biggest mess at the moment, the Conservatives or the Labour Party, and Polly, I’ll start with you.

POLLY MCKENZIE: Probably the Labour Party, because at least the Conservatives have a process which will get them to a leader they will broadly all be happy with, even if the country has to like it or lump it. Whereas the Labour Party, frankly, this could go on for months or even years.

PHILLIP COLLINS: Well, the Conservative Party’s mess is more important because they are visiting it on the rest of us, they are visiting it on the country. So their mess is more important in that sense, but the bigger mess if it weren’t for that obviously important fact is the Labour Party, which is facing the prospect it might not even exist quite soon.

JO: An existential threat to the Labour Party, Paul Mason?

PAUL MASON: Yes, well I noticed your political editor, comprehensive though he was on the unnamed sources inside Westminster omitted to report that there had been tens of thousands of people on the streets here in Manchester, in Cardiff and Birmingham, just tonight, supporting Jeremy Corbyn. Now, Labour is in a mess and what you’ve seen so far is the equivalent of the kind of Haka before the rugby match. If the actual rugby match actually kicks off, it’s going to get very brutal. And I think what we all need to do, on all sides of this debate, I’m a Labour member and I voted Remain, is to try and find a way to de-escalate it , because this generation of people who signed up to depose Jeremy Corbyn, these young, centre-left MPs, have no idea what an actual struggle inside the labour movement looks like. Those of us who saw the miners’ strike and have seen what people are getting ready for right now, fear . . . It is, it won’t disappear, it may, however, seriously split.

JO: Who speaks for you at the moment, politically? As a Corbyn-friendly Remainer?

PAUL MASON: Well, Jeremy Corbyn. I think he’s speaking but we, the wider Labour family, have to find some way of de-escalating this, and of course, focusing on the policies, the policies . . . The fact is, Corbyn and John McDonnell scored a fantastic success this week, not one you would want to score, but they’ve knocked Osborne away from his fiscal rule. We were calling for him to do that, he’s dropped it, but now we have to come up with a new fiscal policy for Britain. I would be arguing for a fiscal stimulus, tax cuts for businesses to attract investment now, investment tax spending to boost investment, all that needs to happen, but of course, it’s going to canon straight into the Brexit negotiations. We need both parties, actually, to be on the ball . . .

JO: Okay . . .

PAUL MASON: . . . and thinking in a centrist and national interested way.

JO: Okay Paul. Phil Collins, the credit for the fiscal retreat of George Osborne being handed there to Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. I’ll let you respond to that in a moment. I’m interested also, in the notion of Jeremy Corbyn speaking for Labour Remainers while Labour Remainers in the main blame him for the Brexit?

PC: Yeah, which I think is a bit harsh, actually, I think there’s a lot more in the vote to leave the European Union than could have been solved by Jeremy Corbyn, so I don’t think it helps to blame him. He was a pretty lukewarm advocate for it but that’s because he’s not very good. It’s not because he had a particular bad day, it’s that he was as good as he can be, which is not very good at all. I think it’s . . . as scientists say of a bad theory, that it’s not even wrong. And it’s not even wrong to suggest that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell are to gain the credit for George Osborne changing his rule, he’s changed the rule because the country has had a massive economic shock and we’re going to come out of the European Union. It’s perfectly reasonable in politics to try and claim your opponent’s shifts, so I’ve no objection to them attempting to do so, but it’s not credible to think that that’s the reason it’s happened.

JO: Polly are we looking at something rather more fundamental than the usual local difficulties, infighting and squabbles that typify your world?

POLLY MCKENZIE: I think something has to change, because as you said in your intro, there’s nobody who really represents the 48%, the people who voted for Remain. And we don’t even have a mandate for a government to negotiate our Brexit. As we were hearing earlier, we don’t know what kind of Brexit we want – a sort of economically sensible EEA-type strategy or, you know, full complete distance and we just cut ourselves off and float in the mid-Atlantic? And actually, unless there’s some sort of election or some sort of realignment of politics, nobody has a mandate to make that decision.

JO: What would that realignment look like?

POLLY MCKENZIE: At the moment, God only knows. I mean, you know, there is this growth in the Liberal Democrats but with only eight MPs it’s hard to see Tim Farron leading . . .

JO: (interrupting) Tim Farron has committed to a campaign, a manifesto that would involve doing everything possible to get back into the European Union.

POLLY MCKENZIE: To get back in, absolutely, and, you know, I feel very strongly represented by that but they only have eight MPs and it’s hard to see that as being enough to build a new centre party.

PC: It’s possible that a break could come if Jeremy Corbyn digs in and then he’s challenged and he wins again and then the 172 Labour MPs in Parliament who have declared no confidence in him declare themselves a new party, that’s not beyond the balance of possibility at the moment. So we might, we’re closer perhaps than we’ve ever been before. I’m not sure it’s a great solution or a great outcome but that is entirely feasible at the moment.

JO: Have we found something on which you can all agree, Paul Mason, that a fundamental realignment might well be on the horizon?

PAUL MASON: I think centrist politics, which wants to rejoin the European Union after this . . . i.e. overtly and proactively rejoin the European Union, would be . . . would have to be a new party. Because neither the Conservatives nor Labour are going to do that, as parties. But I do think there is a big problem for centrist politics, full stop. Centrist politicians from both sides are going to be called upon to act in the national interests in a way that they are not really used to defining. You know, what should happen right now is we should slash business tax and boost business investment. The moment we do that, the people we are across the table from in the Brexit negotiations, the French and the Germans are going to say ‘hold on a minute – this is unfair competition, Mr’ – whoever it is they are talking to, ‘Please withdraw your tax cut in order to get back into the EEA’ – I favour going into the EEA, I also favour doing rapid tax cuts to boost growth and business investment. So, we need a political class that knows how to do this sort of thing, they’re not used to it, because they’re used to 40 odd years of multilateralism that they triggered the breakdown of.

JO: Mr, or of course, it may well be a Mrs . . .

PAUL MASON: It could be a Mrs, very sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah.

JO: (speaking over) That’s quite alright, they’ll be negotiating with.

POLLY MCKENZIE: Most importantly, there isn’t anybody to make those decisions. We’ve had this unbelievably hectic week in British politics but actually we have no more clarity one week on about what on earth we’re going to do next. And it’s that complete vacuum, whatever negotiating strategy we adopt, the truth is we need to start doing something because all across Europe and especially in Brussels, people are planning for how to negotiate this in their interests and not in ours, whereas we, you know, we’ve got a Cabinet Office team of three people thinking about this.

PC: (word or words unclear) a referendum doesn’t give you a mandate for anything in particular, it’s a mandate to leave the European Union.

JO: It’s a binary question.

PC: There are no, sort of, terms . . .

JO: (speaking over) How big a part do you think that’ll play in the Conservative candidate battle, do you think they’ll be putting forward rival visions of Brexit, or do you think they’ll just be trying to sort of woo the party faithful in the normal way?

PC: It’s very interesting that the overwhelming favourite appears to be someone who voted Remain, that was on the Remain side, Theresa May. I mean, I guess nobody would have predicted that this time last week, but then I suppose nobody would have predicted anything that’s happened this time last week. But it does appear that she’s moving ahead. As yet, as we said in the introduction, everybody there is committed to exit. I don’t think any of them really have the first idea what it means, yet. So I think, if they do put forward any plans, they’ll be very meagre plans indeed.

JO: Paul Mason?

PAUL MASON: Hello?

JO: I beg your pardon, Paul, I was expecting you to respond to what Philip Colins said.

PAUL MASON: Yes, look, I’m sorry, look, what is amazing at the moment is the fact we’ve got this, all the political class cannot utter the words that we have uttered on this discussion, EEA, European economic area. It is the obvious solution, to apply for the European Economic Area, to design a variation on free movement, ask for the emergency brake you can get and then start from there. You may not get it and you may have to recoil back to a complete break with the EU, but it’s logical to go for that. What frustrates me on all sides of Parliament is that people are not prepared to do that and that is because the party machinery is fractured.

JO: Paul Mason, Polly McKenzie, Phillip Collins, many thanks indeed.

The gloves are off in BBC’s fight against Brexit

BBC Bias, EU Referendum | 28th June 2016 | by David Keighley

Many – including the writers of a Daily Mail editorial and the Mail on Sunday’s columnist Peter Hitchens – claimed that the BBC had changed its spots during the EU referendum campaign, and was bringing impartial coverage.

Clearly, there was – for the first time – an attempt at least to talk to the ‘exit’ side. But since the result was announced, any semblance of balance seems to have evaporated.

News-watch’s BBC Complaints website has been inundated since Friday morning with a deluge of submissions, all saying broadly the same thing: the BBC now sees its mission to undermine Brexit in any and every way it can.

Project Fear might have been masterminded by David Cameron and the Tory high command, but something similar now seems to being pursued with vigour by the BBC as it seeks to bring to light every reason it can as to why the electorate was wrong, and even – as Today presenter Nick Robinson claimed on Tuesday – that the referendum itself was ‘unnecessary’.

Keeping track of the Corporation’s new mission is a major headache because almost every programme seems to have the same multi-pronged obstructive agenda:

the vote for ‘exit’ was ultimately based on a form of senile dementia, coupled with hatred of immigrants, and thus on xenophobia and racism;
that the young have been deprived of their EU birthright by selfish, reactionary pensioners;
that Nigel Farage was the prime mover in an unleashing of ‘hatred’. Presenters such as Martha Kearney now routinely dismiss his approach with derogatory adjectives such as ‘sneering’;
to report in close detail any sign of economic unease and magnify it to the maximum extent;
to root out with tireless zeal all those who say that ‘Brexit’ is so difficult to achieve and such an inconvenience that it will require at best a snap general election and at worst a second referendum to deal with the issues involved.
To support in every way it can the cause of those wanting a second referendum because basically the first time round the electorate did not know what they were voting for.

News-watch will write a full detailed report on this in due course. But meanwhile, Exhibit A in this barrage of negativity came on Newsnight last Friday night. It was the first edition to be broadcast after the BBC referendum guidelines were no longer in force. By golly, editor Ian Katz and his Guardian chums went to town.

Pride of place was given Kenneth Clarke, arguably the most ardent, embittered and vitriolic Europhile of them all (News-watch research shows that he has been delivering the same cracked messages for 17 years), to posit and push hard that the referendum result was not conclusive and had unleashed chaos.

The show was orchestrated by a hyperactive Evan Davis, who seized upon every opportunity to show that Brexit would not work. Star turns included Kirsty Wark, who emphasised that Scotland had voted ‘in’ because Scots were more multicultural and welcoming of immigration than England; and then ‘equality campaigner’ (and ‘transgender rights activist’) Paris Lees, who said it was clear that Britain was now being led down a ‘very dark path’.

There were ‘balancing’ guests such as ‘exit’ supporters Tim Montgomerie of the Times and Suzanne Evans of Vote Leave. They expressed differing views but there could be no doubt of what Newsnight’s overall goal was as the dust on the poll settled: to establish that Brexit equals turmoil.

Exhibit B is an item written on Tuesday by James Naughtie – one of the Corporation’s eminence gris – for the BBC website. It has to be read in full to be appreciated. To cut a long story short, he compares the upheaval now underway to that when Henry V died, and en route betrays that he thinks the referendum ballot, in which 17 million Britons voted for ‘exit’ was a chance occurrence. A magisterial posting by Craig Byers of Is the BBC Biased? betrays the extent of his blatant bias.

Exhibit C is the pushing of the ‘Brexit equals racism’ agenda on multiple fronts. On Tuesday’s BBC1 News at Ten for example, it was stressed that the number of racist assaults had increased in the wake of the vote, and BBC reporter Ed Thomas went out on the streets of Leeds to show, first that local Latvian residents were under attack, and then, for good measure, found what he said was ‘a fascist’ with a swastika tattoo on his biceps to ram home that supporters of ‘out’ meant business.

In the same vein, Victoria Derbyshire assembled for her BBC1 show earlier in the day, a cast of interest groups and campaigners who were angrily determined to show the level of racism in the ‘leave’ vote. Shazia Awan – who it was said had faced ‘racist abuse’ – stated (over caption overlays illustrating the alleged extent of the abuse):

‘Now, Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and their alliance with Nigel Farage and taking donations from the BNP have caused this. Boris Johnson is not fit to be leader of the Conservative Party.’

Only time, and more detailed analysis, will show the full extent of this BBC bias. But these early signs are that for the Corporation, the poll last Thursday was an aberration to be fought on every possible front. The gloves are off.

Craig Byers: Mishal Husain distorts immigration debate

BBC Bias, EU Referendum | 20th June 2016 | by Craig Byers

I’ve been a little bit surprised at how little has been written (so far) about Mishal Husain’s BBC Two documentary Britain & Europe: The Immigration Question.

I’ve seen barely a comment about it anywhere.

For me, however, it was one of the most striking ‘landmark’ programmes of the BBC’s entire EU referendum coverage.

Why has there been so little comment? Was it because few people watched it? Or that they did watch it but found nothing to complain about?

I have to say that I found it thoroughly biased.

Yes, Mishal Husain & Co. covered their backs by featuring plenty of people from each side and making impartial noises throughout, but the programme’s structure was fundamentally biased.

That biased structure followed a classic template (however disguised it may have been):

Start by focusing on the side you don’t agree with.

Give them time (say the first quarter of an hour) and allow them a good hearing so that you appear to be being fair.

Then spend the rest of the programme (three quarters of an hour) taking their points one by one and systemically trying to undermine or debunk them.

Add more and more attractive voices from the side you do agree with as you go on (say lots of successful, well-integrated, UK-loving EU migrants).

Add other voices from the side you do agree with who people who don’t share your point of view will relate to even more (say fearful British expats).

Keep adding that every case you’ve shown which suggests mass EU migration has had unfortunate consequences isn’t typical of the UK as a whole.

Also keep carefully, cautiously, adding your own points pushing the narrative of the side you support.

Keep including voices from the side you don’t agree with though in order to keep appearing fair, and – if possible – use them, wherever you can, to back your case (say using Matthew Goodwin and Iain Duncan Smith to rubbish concerns about benefits tourism expressed by members of the public elsewhere).

And mix!

The first quarter of an hour was dominated by pro-Leave/immigration-sceptic voices (plus an empathetic if not sympathetic academic) – Sonia from Clacton, Douglas Carswell MP, Professor Matthew Goodwin, Alp Mehmet of Migration Watch and Rod Liddle. Plus Alan Johnson from Labour In for Britain (for the Remain side) – the ‘dissenting voice’ – was shown being challenged by Mishal Husain.

Despite Mishal noting ‘in passing’ that Clacton has unusually low numbers of EU migrants, this was ‘a dream start’ for pro-Leave viewers.

Then came the remaining three quarters of an hour of the programme.

Though other pro-Leave voices were included, along with those we’d already met – Iain Duncan Smith, Angie from Boston – and some hard-to-position public servants (head teachers, GPs) were also given space to point out the problems (and blessings) of sudden mass EU immigration….

…this (much longer) section of the programme focused far more on the pro-Remain/pro-mass immigration voices.

We heard from a successful Lithuanian migrant couple, Jonathan Portes of the NIESR, Alan Johnson (again), Professor Heaven Crawley, various EU migrant workers, Madeleine Sumption of the Migration Observatory, various likeable Edinburgh university students from the rest of the EU who love us, Stephen Gethins from SNP In Europe; Basia Klimas-Sawyer, a successful long-time migrant from Poland who loves England; Grazyna Lisowska-Troc, a successful Polish migrant to UK, and her charming daughter…and not one but two expat couples who love EU freedom of movement and like what the EU has done for them and who fear a pro-Brexit vote.

Mishal took on the concerns of pro-Leave/immigration-worried voters one by one – concerns about low-paid migrants undercutting British workers; pressure on schools; pressure on the NHS; concerns about benefit tourism – and undermined them.

Every place she’d gone to in order to report those concerns wasn’t typical, she kept saying. In the rest of the country the downsides of mass EU immigration aren’t anywhere near so stark, she kept saying.

Then came the sections on: pro-immigration Scotland (something Mishal asserted as a fact despite polling evidence from the BBC itself showing that Scotland is almost as keen as England to tighten up on immigration); the fears of British expats living in the EU thanks to EU freedom of movement (even though one man said he might have voted ‘Leave’ if he still lived in the EU); and, finally, the thoughts of those economically-helpful, flourishing, robustly middle-class EU migrants who have taken up living in Britain and taken up British citizenship, and who love living here, love the UK and love us.

And then there was Mishal’s commentary. Here’s a sample:

(Following on from Alan Johnson): Recent figures from the taxman support the assertion that migration has been good for the economy.

(Teeing up Jonathan Portes): In London more than a third of the population was born outside the UK. It’s the most economically successful part of the country, crucial to the national economy. Some say the two things are linked.

(Teeing up Professor Heaven Crawley:) One industry where (migrants) play an important role is in caring for our ageing population.

(Debunking concerns about pressure on schools): A quarter of this schools pupils come from Eastern Europe and like other parts of the UK with high numbers of migrants there is real competition for places. But nationally a different picture emerges. We know that most children in Britain do in fact get into the school they want.

(Debunking concerns about pressure on the NHS): With such a high concentration of migrants Peterborough is far from typical.

(Debunking concerns about pressure on the NHS): Most migrants are young so they use health services much less than average.

(Debunking concerns about pressure on the public services in general, and teeing up Madeleine Sumption): But there is something missing in the argument you often hear about migration putting pressure on public services as a whole. Most of the arrivals from the EU are working and paying taxes. Surely that extra money should help pay for extra demand on hospitals and schools.

(To IDS, who agrees with her about benefit tourism not really being an issue): In fact EU migrants are less likely than UK nationals to claim unemployment benefit, housing benefits, tax credits, all of those.

(About Scottish attitudes to immigration, and teeing up the SNP’s pro-immigration Stephen Gethins): So why the warm welcome? As its population ages is simply set to need more people, particularly more people of working age. The Scottish government and the Treasury believe that may only be fully achievable through an influx of migrants.

(Of EU free movement and expats): It’s something that’s changed John and Irene’s lives. Like more than a million other Britons they live elsewhere in the European Union.

(On the ‘negative perceptions’ of earlier immigrants): You can even see negative perceptions in communities established by previous phrases of immigration.

(Teeing up Jonathan Portes): There’s no doubt that free movement of labour has been great for many Eastern Europeans. And some would argue there’s been little negative impact on our communities.

**********

Speaking for myself (and at the risk of bring the Thought Police down on me), I have to say that EU immigration isn’t really what matters to me in this EU referendum vote.

Sovereignty, regaining control over our own affairs, security, etc, are issues that matter to me much more than the fact that hundreds of thousands of Poles have suddenly come to live and work alongside us.

It’s not that this influx of EU migrants doesn’t matter at all, of course. The scale and suddenness of the post-2004 EU influx was shamefully mismanaged by our last inept Labour government (and not managed much better by its coalition and Conservative successors). And there have been too many, too quickly (thanks to EU free movement rules). And that influx has unquestionably had a negative impact on the lives of many of our own low-paid and unemployed countrymen…

…but I don’t doubt for one second that many if not most of those EU migrants have been economically and culturally beneficial to us, generally-speaking. And I’m not unhappy to have them here with us either – and, if we vote to leave the EU, I hope that many will stay with us and others will come to live with us.

And very importantly for me, most of those people have not wanted to harm us either (usually quite the reverse).

They don’t want to change us or blow us up or decapitate us in the name of their religion.

Immigrants who do want to change us or blow us up or decapitate us in the name of their religion bother me much, much more. We should concentrate on stopping them coming into our country at all costs, and on getting rid of every one of them who does manage to get it and wants to do us harm. That’s what taking back control of our borders would mean to me.

That’s my bias on this issue.

This article first appeared onIs the BBC Biased

Transcript of BBC2, 14th June 2016, Britain & Europe: The Immigration Question, 9pm

MISHAL HUSSAIN: It’s the decision of a lifetime. Whether to stay in or to leave the European Union, the vast economic and political bloc that’s opened the doors of the UK to people from across the continent. Immigration is one of the most emotive and controversial issues in British politics. UNNAMED MALE: Listen, my daughter could not get a school place!

UNNAMED MALE 2: (word or words unclear) was a refugee (word or words unclear)

MH: And now it’s centre stage in the referendum campaign.

BORIS JOHNSON: You have absolutely no way of stopping it.

NIGEL FARAGE: Isis say they will use this migrant crisis to flood Europe with jihadi fighters. I suggest we take them seriously.

ALAN JOHNSON: You use immigration to frighten people – it’s always been a powerful political weapon.

MH: On one side, people claim that free movement within the EU is bad for Britain.

ROD LIDDLE: For the top 4-5%, they get a gilded life of much cheaper nannies. But if you go outside London, wages are being lowered time and time again by cheap labour coming in from the continent.

ANGIE COOK Business Owner, Boston?: I don’t know if I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying this or not, I don’t care. I only employ English drivers.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: This is not an anti-migration. This is an anti-uncontrolled migration.

MH: While those who want to remain claim the economic benefits of free movement outweigh any problems.

ALAN JOHNSON: The level of immigration in terms of free movement is something that I support.

DAVID CAMERON: You will fundamentally damage our economy. That cannot be the right way of controlling immigration.

MH: How we weigh up these arguments will shape the outcome of the referendum next week, and the future of the country for years to come. (opening titles) The English seaside. Evocative of a bygone, perhaps a simpler era, when Britain had a different sense of its identity. This is Clacton in Essex, filmed in 1961 when it was a thriving resort. Today, Clacton looks like this. Like many coastal towns, it has suffered. Its biggest attraction, a Butlin’s holiday camp, closed years ago.

SONIA CHOWLES: Swan Taxis, good morning. Yeah, where from?

MH: Sonia Chowles works in a local taxi office.

SONIA CHOWLES: I have lived in Clacton on and off since I was about seven years old, um, so 23 years. I did leave Clacton for about a year but I came back, and I haven’t left since and… I have no intentions of leaving either.

MH: But life here is not easy for Sonia and her young family. Her husband is disabled and she’s desperate for a council house that better suits their needs.

SONIA CHOWLES: The housing waiting list is 15 years long, which is a huge amount of wait for someone who needs a home, so I don’t think it’s a case of no more immigrants, I think it’s a case of no more anybodies. I just don’t think the town can take any more, be them English, Welsh, Scottish, be them from the EU, be them from America. We just can’t physically take any more people into this town. There’s already too many.

MH: Clacton has a relatively low population of people born outside the UK, but immigration is a big issue here, as it is in many parts of the country. At the last election, almost 4 million people across Britain voted for Ukip, a party dedicated to getting Britain out of the European Union.

DOUGLAS CARSWELL: It’s Clacton, the largest town. I think it is the centre of the universe.

MH: How do people feel about the EU round here?

DOUGLAS CARSWELL: I think people are pretty sceptical about it.

MH: Despite all those votes, only Clacton elected a Ukip MP, former Conservative Douglas Carswell.

DOUGLAS CARSWELL: It’s the Europe of the political elite that I think people feel frustrated by and hostile towards.

MH: Clacton’s unemployment rate is higher than the national average. And where work is available, wages tend to be low. As far as the frustrations of people who live here are concerned, isn’t that much more about their economic situation? The fact is that this is an area of high deprivation. If they’re going to be angry, they should be angry at Westminster?

DOUGLAS CARSWELL: If what you said was correct, then you would expect that in very prosperous Frinton, there would be less Euro-scepticism than in relatively socioeconomically deprived Jaywick. That’s simply not the case. Many, particularly on the Left, like to think that if people are disaffected and discontent, it must be caused by economics. I think economics is important. But I don’t think that’s really the issue. There are other issues to do with a feeling of control. They want to believe that they can elect a government that can take back control. And no one wants to close the borders, but people do want to control the borders. And I think that’s a quite legitimate aspiration.

MH: How are you going to vote in the referendum?

SONIA CHOWLES: I’m going to vote Out. I’m voting Out, so is my other half, and pretty much everyone else I’ve spoken to. I think immigration’s got a big part to play in the services that are overwhelmed at the moment.

MH: And if we voted to Leave, if the UK left the EU, how do you think that your life would change?

SONIA CHOWLES: I don’t think my life would. To be completely honest, I would hope it would by the time my children are grown up and have their own homes and their own children. I think that’s what we need to do it for, not for the generation now, but for the next generation that are growing up and growing into a country that at the moment is not going to be able to support them when they’re older. Whereas we need a country that will support the next generation, and I don’t think at the moment that we can do that.

PROF. MATTHEW GOODWIN University of Kent: Clacton’s journey, over the last 20 years, I think is a journey that many people in Britain have also been on, and can relate to. And I think it’s a journey that many political representatives, and also media, erm, elites, struggle to relate to. It’s a part of Britain that doesn’t celebrate what people in London celebrate. It’s a part of Britain that doesn’t cherish the progressive cosmopolitan values that people in London cherish. It’s a part of Britain that feels as though a way of life that it once knew and held tight is slipping away over the horizon. And it wants to let people know that’s how it feels.

BORIS JOHNSON: Is it not time we took back control of our immigration policy?

MH: But concern about immigration from the EU goes far beyond Clacton.

NIGEL FARAGE: We want our borders back. We want our country back!

MH: Polls regularly suggest that it is a big concern for British voters.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: (speaking to voter on doorstep) We can’t control our border with the EU from migration and that runs pretty much out of control now.

BORIS JOHNSON: We won’t be drowned out, will we? (crowd shouts ‘no’)

MH: As we approach the referendum, EU migration is, for some, the biggest issue of all. And Leave campaigners have been keen to put it at the top of the agenda.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I can’t think of any other country in the world that would not… That would think it somehow extreme to want to have border control and therefore to be in charge of how many people come into your country. That seems to me a quite reasonable position to take.

ARCHIVE NEWS FOOTAGE: (Choir sings ‘Ode to Joy’) Celebrating a new beginning, a new Europe’.

MH: In 2004, many former Communist countries joined the European Union. A moment of unity and history for a continent that had seen decades of ideological division. At the time, net migration from the EU stood at 15,000 a year. But a new era was about to begin.

ALP MEHMET Migration Watch UK: In 2004, we had the enlargement of the EU. Unlike some of our EU partners, we said yeah, anyone who wants to come from the eight countries from Eastern Europe can come straight away. Well, that was a mistake, and it’s been acknowledged that that was a mistake.

ARCHIVE NEWS FOOTAGE: A new queue for the newcomers, able to have their passports checked in the EU channel for the first time.

ALP MAHMET: The government commissioned some studies as to what sort of additional numbers might we expect, and lo and behold, they were told that it would be no more than 13,000 a year. It was a hell of a lot more than that.

MH: Within three years, the figure was almost ten times that – as annual net migration from the EU went above 120,000.

ROD LIDDLE: The public weren’t told. There was a deliberate decision by the Labour government, which I voted for, I’m a member of the party, it was a deliberate decision to keep the public in the dark about immigration, which is utterly shameful. And they did that because they knew that the public would balk at the numbers who were coming in.

MH: Do you think that the British public was misled about how many people from eastern Europe would come in after 2004, because that is the charge that’s been placed against the Labour government of the time?

ALAN JOHNSON: Not deliberately misled. They got the facts wrong. The figures were wrong and for that, I think various ministers have apologised over the years. We had 600,000 vacancies in the economy. There was a transition period of seven years, but the three most successful economies in Europe, ourselves, the Irish Republic and Sweden, actually needed people. We needed workers.

MH: But if you had had the right numbers at that point, would you have looked at them and thought, “This is going to be a lot for the country to handle. We should think carefully about how we go about this”?

ALAN JOHNSON: Perhaps, because the numbers were far higher than we expected. And we needed people over here. In a sense, the market was working because there were jobs for people to come to. But I guess that would have coloured our judgement if we’d have got, if the statistics . . . these statistics are never right, by the way.

DAVID CAMERON: No ifs, no buts, this is a promise we made to the British people and it is a promise we are keeping.

MH: Against a long-term rise in migration to Britain, David Cameron made a bold pledge in his election manifesto of 2010.

DAVID CAMERON: Net migration to this country will be in the order of tens of thousands each year.

MH: That target has never been met. In fact, net migration, the number of people arriving minus those leaving the country, has risen. Last month, the Office for National Statistics revealed that in 2015, it was 333,000. EU net migration was 184,000. Is the level of immigration, at the moment, acceptable to you?

ALAN JOHNSON: The level of immigration in terms of free movement is something that I support. The level of immigration that’s coming from outside the . . .

MH: (speaking over) 184,000 people?

ALAN JOHNSON: . . . European Union, that’s 184,000 people. This is not a great crisis, incidentally. There is not a crisis out there. There is a situation where we need to ensure we have people working in jobs, paying taxes, to make sure we can cope with an aging population.

MH: There are now an estimated 3 million EU citizens living in Britain. The population of the UK is projected to rise by more than 4 million in the next ten years, half of that directly because of immigration, both from the EU and the rest of the world. The principle that the European Union’s 500 million citizens have freedom of movement means that immigration is part of our referendum debate. For some, it may well be the defining issue when they decide whether to vote Leave or Remain. So how can we assess its true impact on the UK?

IEZA ZU: One step closer to me, please.

MH: Ieva Zu is originally from Lithuania, and now now runs an online business in London, promoting eastern European fashion designers.

IEZA ZU: London is a perfect place to be because it’s a hub of fashion as well. At least, well, I think so!

MH: Ieva’s partner Paulus enjoys a successful career in finance, and they’ve started a family here. A pin-up couple for those who think migration is good for our economy. Is Britain going to be your home?

PAULUS: Well, as far as we can see in the near future, that seems to be the case. Alex was born here one year ago, and right now, our world really revolves around him.

MH: Do you feel that Britain is benefiting from your presence in the same way that you’ve benefited from being here?

PAULUS: Well, I would hope so, that we are, you know, adding value to the society and not just taking it out as a resident, you know?

IEZA ZU: Yeah, not as a person who just lives here.

PAULUS: Coming from Lithuania, that was occupied by Soviet Union and, you know, that makes you really appreciate the freedom that you have, you know?

MH: In London, more than a third of the population was born outside the UK. It’s the most economically successful part of the country, crucial to the national economy. Some say the two things are linked.

JONATHAN PORTES National Institute of Economic and Social Research: I do not think it is controversial to suggest that the substantial success of London, not just within the UK economy but perhaps within the global economy over the past 20 years is owed in large part to the relatively high levels of migration we’ve had at all skill levels. On the whole, the European Union migrants pay significantly more in taxes than they take out in benefits or public services. So either we, the rest of us, are paying lower taxes or we’re getting better public services than we otherwise would have.

IEZA ZU: Great, one more time please.

ALAN JOHNSON: I would say free movement has been positive for this country. This concept that within those borders, within that single market, you can move freely, not just goods, not just capital, but labour as well, is essential to actually making that operate and yes, it’s been good for this country. Witness the fact, you know, the Leave side often say but Britain’s the fifth biggest economy in the world. Well, it wasn’t when we went into the EU. 43 years’ membership of the European Union has helped us be the fifth biggest economy in the world.

MH: Recent figures from the taxman support the assertion that migration has been good for the economy. In the year 2013 to 2014, European migrants like Ieva contributed £2.5 billion more to British coffers than they took out. But many would argue that any economic benefits of migration have not been spread around.

ROD LIDDLE: For the top 4-5%, they get a gilded life of much cheaper nannies. Of . . . their basement extensions in Notting Hill are done both more speedily and more cheaply by Polish immigrant labour. But if you go outside London, you will see that the big, big problem there, or one of the big problems, is low wages, you know, and those wages have been lowered time and time again by cheap labour coming in from the Continent.

ANGIE COOK: Hello, Angie speaking.

MH: Angie Cook runs a transport business in Boston, Lincolnshire. She used to supply drivers for the haulage industry, but says her company folded because of competition from a rival agency.

ANGIE COOK: 9am in the morning? Yeah, no worries at all. They were bringing drivers over here by the busload. If I’d have reduced the wages for the drivers, they would have left. If I reduced the prices to the customer, I couldn’t, I wasn’t making a profit. So where do you go? And this was because someone had been across to the EU and recruited all these drivers and put them in cheap, low-cost housing that our drivers and our workers cannot compete with.

MH: Angie has started a new business. And she’ll be voting for Brexit ? because she’s had enough of the EU and its supply of cheap workers.

ANGIE COOK: Now, I don’t know if I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying this or not, I don’t care. I only employ English drivers.

MH: Across Britain, hundreds of thousands of European migrants are in low-paid work. In sectors like agriculture and tourism, they’re a vital resource for many businesses.

FARM WORKER, FOREMAN(?): It’s very difficult to get any of the local people to do the job. It needs . . . it’s a very high demanding job as well.

FARM WORKER: I started with field operative. Now in winter time, I’m line operative in the factory, and I have the chance to be promoted.

MH: It’s often said that Europe’s migrants will do work that British people won’t, at least not for a low wage. One industry where they play an important role is in caring for our ageing population.

CARE WORKER: You’re going downstairs with me for a cup of tea. In the garden.

MH: One in five of adult care workers in England are born outside the UK, rising to three in five in London. The number recruited from EU countries has increased and there are now an estimated 80,000 EU citizens working in the sector in England alone.

PROF. HEAVEN CRAWLEY Coventry University: One of the consequences of us increasing the proportion of young people who go into higher education, for example, is that there are less people available, young people available to do some of those low-skilled jobs. People don’t want to come out of having a degree and then end up working in the care sector, for example. So those demands in the care sector become ones that people from within Europe, who are moving, who are arguably low-skilled, come to fill.

MH: Our economy needs the low-skilled, or the unskilled workers.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: (speaking over) Well, I fundamentally diasagree with you.

MH: (speaking over) Really? Fruit picking, warehouses, internet shopping.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: (speaking over) No, no, this has been an absolute nonsense in the UK economy for some time. You get a lot of nonsense from businesses suddenly saying to you, “Oh, we’ve tried to hire British workers, they just won’t work”. When you investigate it, you find they didn’t bother at all. They were going outside because they knew they could get a lower wage for these people and thus that would improve their profits. Now, I am fundamentally against that.

MH: A Bank of England report found that broadly, migration has had a small negative impact on average British wages. And crucially, it concluded that workers at the low-paid end of the spectrum have been more affected.

MH: As a Labour politician, a depression of wages must be something that bothers you?

ALAN JOHNSON: As a Labour politician and a trade unionist, I have never throughout my career blamed exploitation on the people who are being exploited. The trade union movement in this country, I’m proud to say, have not found scapegoats amongst immigrants. They’ve tried to tackle the exploitation. Now the Bank of England found a very small, very small, difference there, and that’s all acc . . .

MH: (interrupting) That might not feel small to people who are actually at the receiving end of it.

ALAN JOHNSON: Well, that’s… That’s about where you set the minimum wage. That’s about issues like the Agency Workers Directive. It’s a protection that British workers have. Most people coming in who will undercut the wage of those who are working here come in through agencies. The Agency Workers Directive was a very important way of stopping that, through the European Union.

MH: But this debate is about more than pay. What will the other effects be if our population really does increase by 10 million in the next 25 years, as projected? The obvious place to start is with the sheer numbers. Can Britain really support the millions of newcomers? Many are asking, where will they all live?

ALP MEHMET: To meet the needs of the population increase that is largely the result of that scale of immigration, we would have to build something like 250,000 houses a year. We are building nothing like that. It’s a nonsense to suggest that we are going to suddenly build that number of houses that are required, be it in London or elsewhere throughout the country. We are simply not going to do it. So all that is going to mean is more and more of a shortage of housing, largely because of the increase in our population which, as I say, is largely driven by migration.

JONATHAN PORTES Most of that population growth will, as it has done over the last 15 years, probably occur in London and the rest of south-east England, where of course, we know that we don’t build enough houses. Now the reason that we don’t build enough houses is of course relatively little to do with immigration. That reflects the dysfunctional nature of UK housing policy, going back for at least the past 20 or 30 years or so, the failure of successive governments simply to ensure that we build enough houses. But there’s no doubt this is a major challenge going forward.

MH: So if we may have trouble housing a growing population, what about the impact of migrants from the European Union on public services like health and education? To find out, I headed to the city with one of the highest proportions of EU migrants anywhere in the country, Peterborough in Cambridgeshire. This part of Peterborough has seen large numbers of people come in from Europe in recent years. Portuguese, Poles, Lithuanians – all have made this city their home. Welcome to what is appropriately named New England. Many of the migrants come here to work in agriculture. Many farmers believe they are essential to the local economy. But what is the impact on local services? This is Fulbridge Academy, a primary school ranked outstanding by the schools regulator, Ofsted.

IAIN ERSKINE: I’ve been at Fulbridge Academy for a very long time, over 20 years here as head. So I’ve seen enormous changes. (to two children) Where have you been?

CHILD: I’ve just been . . .

IAIN ERSKINE: The main change really has been the numbers game. It has been a huge increase in the number of children in the area. It’s a densely-populated area anyway. But with all the different nationalities come in, that’s put enormous strain on school places.

TEACHER: If you look at the paragraph you have in front of you . . .

MH: A quarter of this school’s pupils come from eastern Europe. And like other parts of the UK with high numbers of migrants, there is real competition for places. But nationally, a different picture emerges. We know that most children in Britain do in fact get in to the school they want. 84% of families in this country get their first choice of secondary school, so it doesn’t suggest that there’s a massive problem with school places?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: No, but a recent report from the Education Department made it very clear that they’re having to build significantly more numbers of schools to deal with the plan and the forecast on migration and the existing migration. It’s just . . . it’s what they’ve said. And even beyond that, there is a strong perception and recognition that it does play a role from the British public. So there is one way to deal with it. You can dismiss it. You can say that 84% means not a problem to settle, not an issue, they’re talking nonsense. In which case, this will just grow and grow as a concern because it’s not being dealt with by British politicians.

MH: But apart from potential competition for places, what is the effect of an influx of migrants on standards?

IAIN ERSKINE: We’ve certainly found that children from other nationalities, particularly eastern European communities, are very keen on education, very positive about their children doing well. And many of the children become, by Year 6, when they leave us, if we’ve had them for four, five years, they can be some of our highest achieving children.

TEACHER: I’d like you to play A and E.

MADELEINE SUMPTION The Migration Observatory: There isn’t a huge amount of evidence on how that’s affecting what we care about, at the end of the day, which is the outcomes for pupils in UK schools. But the couple of studies that have been done were not able to identify any negative impact. They suggested that students are doing just as well regardless of whether there are new migrants coming into those schools.

MH: Another vital service always close to voters’ hearts is the NHS. We all know the huge pressures the system is under. What will happen if the population increases as projected? In Peterborough, doctors are feeling the strain treating the migrant workers and their families.

DR EMMA TIFFIN General Practitioner: We do have a large number relative to other parts of the country in houses of multiple occupancy, so several families in one house, you know, sometimes a family in one room. And as I say, the actual quality of the housing is often, you know, poor, so there are houses round here that are very damp. That in itself causes the high risk of things like respiratory infections. We do find that whole families and households present with infections particularly. Including the children?

DR EMMA TIFFIN: Absolutely, so again if you look at the A&E figures for our local hospital, they’re high, you know, particularly for respiratory infections and in the younger group.

MH: Do you therefore see migration as an added pressure on the service you can offer as a local GP?

DR EMMA TIFFIN: Yes, absolutely, definitely, and I think the number of challenges for me since working in Peterborough, is unbelievable, actually. I think language, the whole difference in health beliefs and behaviour, and actually the higher sort of prevalence of illnesses related to poverty and difficult housing conditions would be three of the biggest issues.

MH: With such a high concentration of migrants, Peterborough is far from typical. Nationally, the picture is mixed. Most migrants are young, so they use health services much less than average. For the same reason, they have more children, so maternity units can face extra pressure. But there is something missing in the argument. You often hear about migration putting pressure on public services as a whole. Most of the arrivals from the EU are working and paying taxes. Surely that extra money should help pay for extra demand on hospitals and schools?

MADELEINE SUMPTION: We shouldn’t see a big impact on services overall. Of course, there may be some localised pressures for particular areas, if there are unexpected increases in demand. There is also another factor that’s actually very difficult to quantify, which is the contributions of EU migrants as workers in the health service. So, for example, last year about 12% of newly-recruited nurses working in the UK were born in EU countries. So they are making up a significant share of that workforce.

MH: Something is going wrong in the way that we are spending. that we are spending what we get in income tax for example from these EU migrants. The Revenue and Customs said recently that EU migrants pay about £3 billion a year in taxes – is it getting lost somewhere? Why is it that we have the effect on services that we are talking about?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: (speaking over) No, well, of course it’s a very narrow way of looking at it. It’s not about saying it’s okay because someone pays taxes so that’s fine, you know, because it’s not the sole issue. The issue I come back to is about human beings. We tend to put these things into just the money, but it’s human beings, and the nature and the scale of that immigration puts pressure on people in the way that they assimilate with people who often, they’re not speaking English as a first language, often they are bringing their kids over. That makes the British people uncomfortable in many places because it is on a scale that they would otherwise not have expected. You expect a lot from people who live in communities and have to accommodate this, have to live with it, have to sort out their schooling, and many people competing for jobs with them. I think, therefore, controlling the scale of that migration is important so that they have time to be able to get to terms with that without feeling as though this is a problem for them.

MH: When we talk about migration into Britain, the debate is rarely just about the numbers or about the pressures of a growing population. It’s often been linked to something else – something emotive, something that reverberates across the UK – who gets what from the benefits system.

DAVID CAMERON: Morning, all! Good morning, good morning.

MH: In the build-up to the referendum, David Cameron spent months touring around Europe renegotiating our membership of the EU, getting, he claimed, a better deal for Britain that would persuade us to stay.

DAVID CAMERON: I’ll be battling for Britain. If we can get a good deal, I will take that deal, but I will not take a deal that doesn’t meet what we need.

MH: Top of the British list was putting a stop to so-called benefits tourism.

DAVID CAMERON: This deal has delivered on the promise I made at the beginning of this renegotiation process. There will be tough new restrictions on access to our welfare system for EU migrants. No more something for nothing.

MH: The Prime Minister’s deal involved partial restrictions on child benefit, as well as a four-year so-called brake on migrants’ ability to claim in-work benefits. Many were sceptical about the chances of this reducing the numbers.

PROF. MATTHEW GOODWIN University of Kent: We had this somewhat bizarre argument during the renegotiation with Brussels that again, the country can control net migration by restricting the amount of welfare for EU migrant workers, as if Bulgarians, Romanians and Poles are going through the welfare policies of European states and are adjusting their plans accordingly.

MH: Now the Vote Leave campaigners, even those who were part of Cameron’s government, seem to want to distance themselves from the whole issue.

MH: Is there such a thing in your view as benefit tourism from the EU?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I think if I’m honest about it, I think there may be. It’s very difficult to nail down the figures. I mean, I did see somebody say that most people in eastern Europe didn’t actually know what the benefits were here. So I’m a little ambivalent about this one.

MH: Because you sounded pretty convinced about it last year when you said that you wanted the… You know, that benefit tourism was the nut that you wanted to crack.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Yes, I think for those who do come over – I’ve never said they’re a vast number. If the question is, do I think that it is a huge driver for people coming over here, the answer is categorically not. I do not think that.

MH: So it turned out not to be such a large nut (fragments of words, or words unclear due to speaking over)

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: (speaking over) Well, it’s a nut in the sense of having people over here collecting benefits in a certain degree, particularly things like family benefits, which struck me as absurd. But as I said at the time, this is an issue, it’s not the issue.

MH: In fact, EU migrants are less likely than UK nationals to claim unemployment benefit, housing benefit, tax credits, all of those.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: (speaking over) I don’t (word unclear, ‘resile’?) from that at all, that’s, that’s probably true.

MH: Attitudes to immigration vary across the country. Including north of the border. I’ve come to one part of the UK where, for some migrants at least, the welcome mat has been well and truly laid out. The party in government here is a rarity in British politics – one that has campaigned for more immigration. Scotland’s free university education is a huge pull for young people from across the EU, like these Edinburgh University students from Poland and Slovakia. And immigration is perceived less negatively in Scotland than other parts of the UK. Do you feel welcome here?

FEMALE STUDENT: Yeah, I feel, I feel great. Especially here, I feel really welcome. I’ve met lots of great friends, both Scottish and international. So yeah, I feel really, erm . . . Really welcome and comfortable here, I do.

MH: So why the warm welcome? As its population ages, Scotland is simply said to need more people, particularly more people of working age. The Scottish Government and the Treasury believe that that may only be fully achievable through an influx of migrants. The Scottish National Party has been enthusiastic about the benefits of immigration and free movement of people in the European Union.

STEPHEN GETHINS MP SNP in Europe: Scotland’s a country that’s benefitted from immigration over the years. I think about Polish communities who’ve made their home here, Irish communities, English people who have come up, and people from across Europe. One thing I think is lacking from the debate is just a general acceptance that immigration is a good thing, and our country is richer, socially and economically, because of immigration. And let’s not forget that if you were to take every EU migrant out of the workforce, the Chancellor would be left with an enormous black hole in the Treasury, given the amount that they make up in terms of their net contribution to our finances.

MH: And Eastern European immigration or immigration from other parts of the EU would be a big part of what you want?

STEPHEN GETHINS Of course, that’s freedom of movement, isn’t it? And it’s something in this European debate I think we lose sometimes. You know, freedom of movement works both ways. The people from the UK benefit as much as people from elsewhere in Europe. The freedom of movement is a two-way process.

MH: The freedom to live and work in any member state is a fundamental right of EU citizens.

IRENE: (referring to car engine noise) What is it?

JOHN: What, the rattle? Not sure yet.

MH: It’s something that has changed John and Irene’s lives. Like more than a million other Britons, they live elsewhere in the European Union.

JOHN: How are we doing, boys?

IRENE: You need a woman’s touch!

WORKER: Go on, then.

MH: The couple run a go-karting business on the Spanish island of Lanzarote.

JOHN: I’m an ex-Barnsley miner, and my dad was a miner and my grandad before him. The first holiday I ever came on abroad was to Lanzarote when I were a coal miner, and I fell in love with the place then, and that became my dream, to come and live in Lanzarote.

IRENE: We’ve got a great set of boys and we don’t have a big turnover of staff, because it’s a boy’s dream, isn’t it, this job, so it’s the nearest thing to a nine-to-five, but yeah, great. And I’m the only girl. But they all do as they’re told!

MH: John and Irene are worried about the referendum. Their business relies on free trade imports from the UK. If Britain leaves the EU, they’re concerned about the possibility of paying tariffs.

IRENE: We’re definitely going to vote. We discussed it at length. We can vote in general elections but we never do because we feel, because we’re not living in the UK any more, that really we don’t feel we should do that, but this EU referendum is obviously a lot different because it will affect us. I mean, we’re immigrants in effect, in this country, and obviously with regard to the business, we have a lot of suppliers that come from the UK, and obviously any trade agreement that ceases would affect our business, so we’re looking at it very closely. The EU is a big, big thing, isn’t it, darling, for us at the minute?

JOHN: Sure. It’s a big unknown. It’s a big worry.

IRENE: It’s a very a big unknown.

MH: It’s not just those of working age who’ve taken advantage of free movement.

ROBINA: It’s the best thing we ever did, yeah, by coming here. Quite honestly, I think Tony wouldn’t have been so healthy.

MH: At the other end of the island, Tony and Robina are among the 400,000 British pensioners living elsewhere in the EU. As EU pensioners, they are entitled to the same healthcare they would get at home. They can use all the local services, and their healthcare bill is effectively picked up by the British taxpayer.

TONY: Wonderful. The healthcare here is very, very good.

ROBINA: If you have something more serious, say, a heart condition. you’d go to Las Palmas, and Tony went to Las Palmas. He had a small problem, went to Las Palmas. They paid for us to fly there. They put me in a hotel – all free, everything – and they looked after Tony extremely well. You couldn’t have faulted it. It was excellent service.

MH: Tony and Robina also have children living and working across the European Union. For their family, Europe’s free movement of people is a big plus. But they do understand why some back home would want to vote to leave.

TONY: Because I live here, and I’ve seen this island benefit totally from the EU, and it’s great, but if I lived in England, it might be a different story. You know, I, I . . . I think I would probably go the other way, but living here, I can’t fault it. Because they get, they get so much, you know. We get so much, you know, not they, we – we get so much from it.

MH: (footage of migrants breaking down fence) It’s a long way from Lanzarote to the chaos that’s been seen on some of Europe’s borders.

REPORTER: Today on a European border, children were tear-gassed.

MH: But Europe has been rocked by the huge numbers of refugees and migrants entering from Turkey and North Africa. Germany alone last year registered over a million new arrivals. It’s been controversial across the continent.

ROD LIDDLE: Every time that this fantasy land of integration that Germany believes it can foster with migrants from the Middle East and North Africa falls down into a chaos of sexual assaults, robberies and violence. Every time that is reported, every time the security chiefs tell us that for every 200 migrants coming here, one will be a supporter of Isis, every time that happens, then the vote to leave the EU goes up a little bit.

MH: Several EU countries have agreed to take large numbers of refugees.

PROF. HEAVEN CRAWLEY To be clear, the UK has said that it won’t be part of that system. And that there’s no reason why that would change. So, the UK, Denmark and Ireland are not part of that allocation. What the UK has said that it will do instead is to offer up 20,000 places to people who have not yet come to Europe. So, from camps in Jordan and Lebanon in particular, and that they will come in quite gradually, over a five year period. So, although Britain is part of the European Union currently, what we can see from that is that actually the UK has been able to exert, rightly or wrongly, quite a lot of control.

MH: It’s places like this – the borders of our island nation – that have become increasingly linked to the question of EU immigration. The Leavers say it’s simple, outside the EU we would have control – the ability to exclude people from the country. The Remainers say we already have control. Both argue that their vision makes us more secure. Following the terrible attacks in Paris and Brussels, many fear that Britain too is vulnerable.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Once you are a citizen of the European Union it is incredibly difficult for us to exclude somebody in that case, because we have to be able to demonstrate per adventure to the court that we are seeing something of a direct threat. So we don’t have that control, and that may seem to you to be marginal, but that marginal may be the difference in being able to say to somebody that we just don’t want them here.

ALAN JOHNSON: No one waltzes into this country without showing their passport, so it’s not an open door policy. We refuse around about a thousand, two thousand a year of people because we think they’re either a danger. . .

MH: (interrupting) It’s a tiny fraction of the overall numbers of EU citizens.

ALAN JOHNSON: Yeah, but it’s very . . . It’s indicative of the fact that you cannot just come to this country. But we shouldn’t have an anything goes policy and we don’t have an anything goes policy.

MH: However we vote in the referendum, it’s clear that migration from Europe has already brought great change. This is Days of Poland – the biggest eastern European This is Days Of Poland – festival in Britain. This year it attracted thousands of visitors. A festival on this scale would have been hard to imagine just a decade ago, but since then the Polish population has grown tenfold. There are now around 800,000 Poles living in the UK. While many are recent arrivals, some have been here for decades and are completely integrated into British society.

BASIA KLIMAS-SAWYER: I came to England when I was three months old.

MH: And yet these Polish traditions, Polish culture, obviously very important to you?

BASIA KLIMAS-SAWYER: Very important to me. I’m proud to be British. I love living in England and I love so much about it. I wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else, and I love being Polish.

MH: There’s no doubt that free movement of labour has been great for many Eastern Europeans. And some would argue there has been little negative impact on our communities.

JONATHAN PORTESIf you look at the data, if you look at the results of the community cohesion survey, the vast majority of English people still think that the place where they live is a place where people get on pretty well, a place where there are high levels of social cohesion, however you want to define it.

MH: Back in Peterborough, 11-year-old Agata Troc is a chorister at a prestigious Church of England school. She came to live here as a baby when her Polish parents decided to settle in Britain.

GRAZYNA: We like also international food.

MH: Today, the whole family are British citizens. Agata and her parents Grazyna and Tomasz feel they are well integrated, not least with the language.

GRAZNYA: I’ve been living 30 years in Poland. For me, it’s definitely a second language. For her, it’s her first language. It’s a big difference between us. She’s got schooling, she’s been raised here.

MH: And when people ask you where are you from, what do you say?

AGATA: I just say I’m from Poland and I… For about three years some people don’t know I was born in Poland. Sometimes they ask where I was born and I say in Poland, and they’re just like, oh, really? But they don’t believe me.

MH: Because you sound just like . . . just like them.

AGATA: Yeah.

MH: What would you say to someone who is going to vote for the UK to leave the European Union?

GRAZYNA: Crazy. It’s just.. For me, people don’t realise how much benefits we’ve got staying in the EU. There are so many small countries, we… In unity there is our strength.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I want to be welcoming to all people from all nationalities, but there is an issue if you let people come in at their own numbers, the growing numbers that there are, at a scale which is unprecedented. My argument is that it’s, therefore puts pressure on people.

ROD LIDDLE: The public knows a lot better than the BBC does about immigration and has a far better grip on the subject. And they can see that Polish people, there’s no cultural problem, there is not the remotest cultural problem, at all, there is an economic problem, and they wish it would stop, because it harms their income.

MH: You can even see negative perceptions in communities established by previous phases of immigration. This is Brixton in south London.

VOX POP MALE: Don’t get me wrong, Mishal, I do support migration to an extent, but my concern is that there has to be some control as to how much we can realistically accept without causing any particular damage to the system. We welcome them but we have to have a cap or else we are going to have such an influx that we can’t manage.

VOX POP FEMALE: I saw some statistics the other day and the majority of these people are coming here to work ? it does affect our housing, but then why aren’t we building houses? We didn’t have enough houses for our own people.

MH: What are the important issues for you?

VOX POP FEMALE 2: It’s jobs and, of course, also the issue about immigration, and a whole lot of people coming in here then basically not working and feeding off the benefit system, so that’s a big issue.

VOX POP FEMALE 3: Yes, it is.

MH: Is it an issue that would make you vote to leave?

VOX POP FEMALE 2: For me, yes, maybe.

VOX POP FEMALE 3: Yes, of course, it will be.

VOX POP MALE 4: There are a lot of people here now, so if we be by ourselves, I think it will be much better. Too many immigrants.

MH: There is no doubt that immigration is a complicated and an emotive issue. Survey after survey has shown that most people in Britain favour a reduction in the numbers coming in. Leaving the EU could lower those numbers, although it’s important to remember that around half of all net migration has nothing to do with the EU. Those who want us to stay in say we would be mad to take the economic risk of leaving just to reduce immigration. It’s an argument playing out among the politicians.

NIGEL FARAGE: Good, good.

DAVID CAMERON: You will fundamentally damage our economy. That cannot be the right way of controlling immigration.

BORIS JOHNSON: You have absolutely no way of stopping it.

MH: And on the streets.

ROD LIDDLE: I think two things will decide the referendum.

GEORGE OSBORNE: Leaving the EU is a one-way ticket to a poorer Britain.

ROD LIDDLE: One is if people think they’re going to be skint as a consequence of us leaving the European Union.

BORIS JOHNSON: Knickers to the pessimists, how about that?

ROD LIDDLE: The other is if there may be a way to address our immigration problem by leaving the EU.

DAVID CAMERON: There are good ways of controlling migration and bad ways. A good way is what I did in my renegotiation.

NIGEL FARAGE: Isis say they will use this migrant crisis to flood the continent with jihadis. I suggest we take them seriously.

MH: In recent weeks, the rhetoric on immigration has been stepped up.

BORIS JOHNSON: It’s vital that on June 23rd, we do exactly what it says over there and take back control of our immigration system.

ALAN JOHNSON: I was brought up in the slums of Notting Hill, when Oswald Mosely was on the street corner saying, your jobs areas corner saying, your jobs are being taken by immigrants. I lived in Slough for many years, with a big Asian population, where people said, these people are taking your jobs. Now all of those communities have changed. They’ve all changed, and there are a very small number of people who want all of that back to some sepia-tinted world of the early 50s that doesn’t exist.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Border control isn’t about saying no to migration, it’s about saying no to just open ended migration that suits people to pay low wages. My kind of idea about migration is to say, what does Britain actually need? Do we need skills? Do we need software engineers coming from India? Absolutely. If they’re there, and they’re bright, we don’t have enough here. We want to get more trained. Do we need more people to teach people software? Yes. I want to balance this out. This is not an anti-migration. This is an anti-uncontrolled migration.

ALAN JOHNSON: We are not going to stop people moving around the globe by leaving the EU. This suggestion that I’ve heard all my life from various people that, you know, you use immigration to frighten people. It’s always been a very potent political weapon throughout my life.

MH: It’s a real concern for voters.

ALAN JOHNSON: It’s a concern for voters. It’s also a potent political weapon for some politicians.

MH: For now, the politicians hold the floor. But soon it will be your turn to cast your vote. Immigration is just one issue in Britain’s often complex relationship with Europe. But how you feel about it may decide whether you think Britain should stay in or leave the European Union.

Sir Cliff saga shows BBC is ‘impervious to criticism of its journalism’

BBC Bias | 17th June 2016 | by David Keighley

The BBC’s sensationalist coverage of the South Yorkshire police ‘investigation’ of Sir Cliff Richard over alleged sexual impropriety stank to high heaven from the beginning. Now that the 75-year-old singer has been totally exonerated, it stinks even more.

The Richard saga began in August 2014, when – according to an official report by retired Chief Constable Andy Trotter, one of the country’s leading police experts on press relations – the Corporation pressured the South Yorkshire force to make a preliminary search of Sir Cliff’s home into a major primetime television news event.

It should be noted here that although Trotter was as thorough as he could be in reaching his findings, he was handicapped heavily by the conduct of the BBC. Though it had milked to maximum extent the high drama footage of the ‘raid,’ Corporation news chiefs refused point blank to give evidence to his inquiry.

When the report was published in February, this stonewalling was compounded. The only trace on the BBC website of the report is in the South Yorkshire section; in their eyes, therefore it had only local significance.

In his report, Trotter said the BBC had, in effect, misled the police about the amount of information about the investigation it had, and had thus duped the press office into putting pressure on officers to allow them to witness – and, in effect, be part of – the raid.

The way the two organisations acted together was, according to Trotter, totally unwarranted, and outside proper police procedures. Leading leftist human rights barrister Geoffrey Robertson – normally a natural ally of the Corporation – said the nature of the BBC’s coverage amounted to a ‘conspiracy to injure’ the singer.

In the aftermath of the raid, the Corporation’s then deputy director of news Fran Unsworth justified the massive intrusion into the singer’s life by blaming the pressures of the news agenda. In other words, an insolent ‘Not us, guv, we were only doing our job’. BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw compounded this by alleging that if anyone was to blame, it was South Yorkshire police in ‘a deliberate attempt to engineer maximum coverage’.

Part of the Corporation’s stonewall response – and refusal to tesify to Trotter – was that it claimed that a hastily-convened Commons home affairs committee hearing held a few weeks after the raid by the pro-BBC chairman, Keith Vaz, had exonerated its conduct.

It did no such thing, because Vaz, in his haste to finger the police and let the BBC off the hook, reached his conclusions long before the full facts were known. It was Trotter, reporting the following February after a thorough forensic investigation, who – despite the BBC’s refusal to cooperate with him – brought to light the correct picture of collusion, incompetence and misinformation.

After this this sorry, obstructive saga, how did the BBC report this week’s exoneration of Sir Cliff?

To be fair, they have published prominently on the BBC website the singer’s statement about the investigation which included his claim that he had been ‘hung out like live bait’ by the police investigation and his anguish over that his ordeal had last almost two years.

That said, the Corporation’s official reaction to its own role in the events was this:

“We applied normal editorial judgements to a story that was covered widely by all media and have continued to report the investigation as it developed including the CPS’s decision today – which is running prominently across our news output.”

Normal editorial judgments? If this is so, then the BBC inhabits a different moral universe. The reality is that, as the Trotter report found, they deliberately chose from the outset to exaggerate the significance of the raid, and used their immense clout to manipulate and hoodwink an incompetent South Yorkshire police in their efforts.

What it boils down to is that in the pursuit of this story, the BBC did not give a damn for Sir Cliff or the laws and journalistic conventions that are designed to protect the innocent from being unfairly presumed guilty.

Why? Probably because, unlike the BBC’s rock-star heroes such as David Bowie – whose recent death was treated as a world tragedy in the Corporation’s coverage – Richard does not flaunt his sexuality, has never espoused drug use as an essential part of the creative process, and now appeals principally to a middle-of-the road, aging, white, middle England audience. In other words, everything that the BBC abhors. That’s what made him fair game for this in-the-gutter journalism.

A principal issue here is that it illustrates yet again the BBC is impervious to criticism of its journalism and is a law only unto itself. Its guaranteed, lavish funding by a regressive tax allows it to be. In similar vein, as the EU referendum poll fast approaches, it continues to churn out biased pro-‘remain’ coverage for exactly the same reasons. The Corporation is a menace to both the democratic process and moral decency.

Photo by Music News Australia

BBC1 NEWS ‘MAKE YOUR MIND UP’ FEATURES STRONGLY FAVOUR ‘REMAIN’ SIDE:

BBC Bias, EU Referendum | 1st June 2016 | by David Keighley

The BBC1 News at Ten flagship bulletin is carrying a series of reports which it says are about ‘asking about the factors that are likely to influence the way people vote’. They are obviously intended to inform the audience’s choice, and of course, the BBC will insist that they are balanced. Analysis of the six reports broadcast as part of the strand between Sunday May 22 and Friday May 28 suggests very strongly otherwise. In order to understand what is being presented, News-watch has dissected each report and looked at the presenter comment, and the ‘exit’ and ‘remain points’ made. The full transcripts are included at the end.

In summary points of concern that emerged were:

The reports stressed repeatedly that EU money was vital and beneficial to aspects of the UK economy – in building new sports facilities, and in stimulating business growth and revival in stricken economic areas.

On the other side of the coin, there was no explanation that ‘EU money’ actually derives from the UK taxpayer. A fundamental part of the ‘exit’ side’s concerns about the EU was thus omitted from analysis. The only mention of its true origin was in passing from a programme contributor – a Welsh hill farmer who supported Brexit.

Northern Ireland, according to the BBC reporter who filed this edition, could return on Brexit to a regime of tiresome and economy-damaging border checks and the re-introduction of customs houses on roads throughout the province. It was stressed that ‘EU peace money’ had been strongly beneficial.

But there was no explanation that travel and border arrangements in Ireland are governed not at all by the EU but by bilateral UK-Eire arrangements under the Common Travel Area, which has existed for almost a century. It was also not sufficiently explained that barbed wire border checks were introduced only to deal with security issues during the Troubles.

Analysis of the various vox pops (a central feature of all the reports) shows that broadly, those giving reasons for ‘remain’ were edited so that they included a wider and more coherent range of views such as: the EU provided more opportunities for jobs and travel, that it promoted diversity, better security, that introducing border security was ‘completely insane’, that the EU was not broken, that being outside the EU would make the UK ‘very vulnerable’, that the UK was too small and no longer had strong enough armed forces to stand alone

‘Out’ vox pops points tended to be shorter and narrower in scope. They included: that the UK’s influence was waning in an expanding EU, that the EU had taken millions (of pounds) from the UK, that being in the EU allowed in too many immigrants and led to too much Polish food being in Tesco, that jobs were being lost to immigrants.

The vox pop imbalance was most pronounced in Mark Easton’s features from Eastbourne and Knowsley. Each was very strongly weighted to the ‘remain’ perspective. In Eastbourne, the contributions of the younger supporters of ‘remain’ were edited to suggest that the EU was vital to employment opportunities, a non-prejudiced outlook (more detailed analysis in the next section). In Knowsley – which Easton said was likely by virtue of demographics to be among the stronger supporters of exit – he edited the contributions so that the ‘remain’; side were concerned about security, economic viability, because they liked being part of Europe, because the UK needed to combine with others to reduce it vulnerability, and because being in ‘Europe’ was more comfortable. Those in favour of ‘out’ only said that they wanted to get Poles out because they got everything, and because there were too many foreigners who took jobs, Easton summed this up as ‘clear anxiety about the perceived threat from outsiders’.

The more detailed named interviewee contributions in the editions about Northern Ireland, Wales, and Scotland also tended to favour the ‘remain’ side. Barry McGuigan, speaking from a sports facility paid for (it was said) with EU peace money in Northern Ireland, claimed that joining the EU had been strongly beneficial for Eire, and felt on balance that the UK was part of Europe The owner of a whisky distillery in Islay said that the EU provided an essential market for its product, that ‘exit’ would damage jobs and take the local economy back to ‘the dark ages’. In Wales, a university lecture who had published research showing that the EU contribution to Wales was £79 per head, argued that local people did not appreciate that and were focused instead on immigration.

In these three editions’ the exit’ side from named contributors enjoyed much less prominence. From Ireland the DUP leader made what came across as an almost meaningless observation about border control; in Wales, a hill farmer said that EU subsidies were actually UK money and that exit would lead to less regulation; and in Scotland a small business owner argued that the UK could survive outside the EU. All these contributions were significantly shorter than the ‘remain’ contributions.

REMAIN

The arguments for ‘remain’ on an edition-by-edition basis were:

May 22: Reporter Chris Buckler suggested that ‘out’ could lead to the re-imposition of customs borders and Northern Ireland-Eire roads, with associated delays and security checks reminiscent of those in the times of the Troubles. He stressed that Northern Ireland had benefitted from ‘peace money’. It had helped build a sports facility. Former boxer Barry McGuigan, in the sports centre, said that Eire had benefitted ‘enormously’ from being part of Europe. His ‘feeling’ also told him that the UK should be part of Europe. A vox pop said the idea of re-introducing borders was ‘completely insane’.

May 23: Mark Easton said that polls showed that 70 percent of the under 25s wanted to stay in the EU. In an Eastbourne college, one student said that she could not think of a single thing that the UK would lose by remaining or by the huge influx of migrants, another accepted that immigration ‘could cause problems’ but immediately countered that immigrants had helped ‘our country so much’, another supported ‘diversity’ encouraged by the EU, Another said he was very comfortable in the EU and it was not broken. In the final sequence, a student ‘not wanting to sound rude’ said young people’s ideas about Europe were more valid because they were going to be here longer than the Over 50s, and students wanted to go to Europe, and travel in Europe, and study in Europe. Another student contended that their chances of going to Europe as teachers – which they wanted to do – would be jeopardised is there was exit. Europe would also not be ‘so accessible’.

May 24: Huw Edwards said that an academic report indicated that Wales benefitted by £79 per head from the EU. Reporter Hywel Griffith said that since 2000, millions of pounds had come to towns like Ebbw Vale from the EU, and there were signs of spending ‘everywhere’. Dr Daniel Evans said that people in wales did not seem to be aware of the amount of money received by Wales from the EU and were instead talking about issues such as immigration. A car business owner warned that uncertainty over the EU was bad for business and asked why a marriage that was working should end.

May 26: Sarah Smith noted first that polls showed 75% of Scots wanted to remain in the EU. She said that on Islay, the ferry docks had been completely rebuilt with millions of pounds from the EU. She noted that the EU now bought 50% of the output from a revived local whisky distillery which was providing ‘much needed jobs’. She added that the distillery owner believed that leaving the EU would have dire consequences. The owner then said that an exit from the EU would be a ‘return to the dark ages’ that did not bear thinking about. The EU had lifted the local economy in a ‘a very dramatic way’. Smith said after his contribution that he also believed that uncertainty about the EU could delay investment and cost jobs’. In Edinburgh, a remain campaigner emphasised that Scots were happy with the ‘third identity’ that EU membership gave them.

May 27: In vox pops in Knowsley, Mark Easton, the first contributor wanted to stay in for economic reasons, and the second for security. The third liked being part of Europe and did not want to leave. He found another vox pop who did not want to leave ‘because it had all changed now’. Someone else argued – in more depth – that because the UK was a ‘small unit in the world’ being alone meant that fighting was not possible, ‘I think it makes us vulnerable’. The final vox pop agreed that the UK was a small country compared in square footage to the likes of Spain. Britain used to have a strong army, navy and air force, but now staying in ‘makes me feel comfortable’.

LEAVE

The equivalent analysis of ‘exit’ arguments was:

May 22, Arelene Foster, leader of the DUP in Northern Ireland, said: “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… Well, as I say, there are borders all across Europe and those things will be negotiated if there is to be an Out vote.”

May 23: In Eastbourne, in vox pops, members of an Over 50s club said the EU’s influence in the EU was reducing because there were now so many members and another said that too many immigrants were coming to the EU. A third said the EU had taken ‘millions from us’. A student in separate vox pops accepted that ’immigrants could cause problems’.

May 24: Bridget Rowlands, a hill farmer, said that she received thousands of pounds in subsidies from the EU but this was British money that should not go through the EU in the first place. She said that EU meant many rules and regulations and did not feel that farmers benefitted from them. Two vox pop contributors in Ebbw Vale said that immigration was a threat to jobs that should be ‘tightened down’.

May 25: A Broadway resident noted that an issue was that there were ‘two long isles’ of Polish food in the local Tesco, and that the change had been a revolution rather than an evolution (but said he was undecided in terms of the vote).

May 26: In Edinburgh, an exit campaigner said the EU rules prevented the UK having a say, and the EU had appropriated a lot of powers in such a way that it prevented Britons having what they wanted. A Glasgow car parts business owner said he wanted out and wanted to end the notion that leaving would mean pulling up the drawbridge.

May 27: In vox pops opinions included (very briefly) wanting to pull up the drawbridge, wanting to be out for no specific reason (twice) , wanting to get ‘all the English in here’ and all the Poles out, a fear that immigrants were taken jobs, and ‘jobs were being thrown at them’.

BBC NEWS AT TEN TRANCRIPTS – MAY 22 to May 27, 2016.

May 22, 10.49pm – Northern Ireland

MH: 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.

May 23, 10.28pm – Referendum Generation Gap

HE: Well, with just a month to go to that EU referendum – we’re asking about the factors that are likely to influence the way people vote – and one of those factors, certainly, is age. Recent polls suggest that 70 per cent of those aged under 25 want to remain in the EU. It’s very different for those aged over 65 – nearly 60 per cent of those said they’d vote to leave. Our home editor Mark Easton is in Eastbourne with more on the generational gap, Mark?

MARK EASTON: Yeah, well this is a town, Huw, that likes to look out past the pier and across the water to its continental neighbours. And how people react to their neighbours really does depend as you say on their generation. It’s interesting, isn’t it? The generation that voted us into Europe, the EEC back in 1975 now largely wants to vote out and the generation that’s not known anything different wants to vote in. I’ve been trying to find out why. On England’s southern shore Eastbourne is a mix of young and old. Some parts of the town are full of student digs and in others the average age is over 70. At an over 50s club a creative writing class where every single member tells me they’ll be voting to leave the EU. Where you live, John, I think what, 80-odd people, overwhelming support for Out?

JOHN: I think basically they probably want to get the England that they knew when they were younger.

VOX POP FEMALE: We are diminishing with our say, we are just one, first of all we were one in eight or nine, now we’re one in 32 (sic), we’re going to be one in 50, we’re going to be one in 100. We’ve got to scale back.

VOX POP MALE: I think it’s ridiculous that the EU have dictated to us over immigration, that we’ve got no control over our borders, that so many immigrants are coming in. Many of them illegally.

ME: Across town students dance to a different tune. Among these trainee physical education teachers, every single person tells me they’ll be voting to stay in the EU. I think your generation appears to be more comfortable with diversity, people moving around? VOX POP FEMALE 2: Times have changed from the way that our grandads and grandmas’, like, generation, I think, like, diversity has become more, like, accepted.

VOX POP MALE 2: I don’t do the same things as my grandma used to do back in the day. I just get on with it, you know,

VOX POP MALE 3: If it’s not broke, don’t fix it, I’m a very proud Brit, but I’m very comfortable within the EU.

ME: There is an argument that huge numbers of Europeans coming to the UK will change our identity somehow?

VOX POP FEMALE 3: I can’t think of one British thing that we have to lose.

ME: Control of our borders?

VPF3: Yeah, I suppose, you do have immigrants who can cause problems and everyone are worried about, but then again you have the immigrants who come in who have contributed to our country so much.

ME: With such different views on Britain’s relationship with his neighbours across the water we decided to invite representatives of both groups to meet here on Eastbourne’s historic pier. The generation gap is wide. Can it be closed? We took the search for common ground to the pier’s tearoom.

VPM: These Europeans are taking billions of money, why would you want to stay in with them?

VOX POP FEMALE 4: I think it is a matter of accessibility for us. A lot of us are training to be teachers and would like to be able to go and teach abroad and we feel that if we do come out then our chance of that would be jeopardised and it would not be so accessible.

VOX POP MALE 4: They are interfering with our way of life. We didn’t ask them to but they are doing it.

VPF: Everybody keeps coming over to us and we are going over to them, your jobs wouldn’t be there.

VPF3: I don’t mean to sound rude but we are going to be here a little bit longer than you are so therefore surely we should have more say on it because we are the ones who like to go to Europe and travel in Europe, who might study in Europe, so therefore I believe that our views are a little bit more valid than yours.

ME: But actually older people are much more likely to vote in the referendum than the young, so their voice will be louder. Young or old, it’s who takes part that may well decide Britain’s future relationship with its neighbours over the water. Mark Easton, BBC News, Eastbourne.

HE: A quick reminder that Newsnight is coming on BBC Two, with a special programme asking what kind of country the UK would be if there was a vote to leave the EU.

May 24, 10.27pm – Wales and the Referendum

HUW EDWARDS: Much of the debate in the EU referendum campaign centres on the cost of membership. A new report by the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University suggests that in 2014 there was an overall net benefit to Wales of around £79 per head. The Remain campaign says this would be at risk if Britain left the EU – a claim that is hotly disputed by those in favour of Leaving. Our Wales correspondent, Hywel Griffith, has been sampling opinion in South Wales.

HYWEL GRIFFITH: From verdant hills to slowly greening slag heaps, a journey across the Heads of the Valleys Road reveals a lot about Wales’ past, but what about the future?

SAT NAV: Proceed along the A465.

HG: While it’s argued Wales gets more out of the EU than it puts in, the decision facing every voter is far from straight-forward. Bridget Rowlands farms above the Swansea Valley. Every year she receives thousands of pounds in subsidies via Brussels, but she argues the money is really British and shouldn’t go through the EU in the first place.

BRIDGET ROWLANDS Farmer: So, obviously, the more area you’ve got, the bigger the payment is.

HG: For Bridget, the EU also means a lot of rules and regulations. She’s not convinced farmers really benefit.

BR: My payment is down considerably this year and, by 2019, it’s going to be down considerably more. So the amount of money that I’m receiving, if I’m in or out, it’s not going to have a significant impact upon me.

HG: Head east and you come to some of the most deprived areas, not just in Wales, but in the entire European Union. Since the turn of the century, millions of pounds have come via the EU to towns like Ebbw Vale, which has lost its steelworks. There’s signs of spending everywhere, but that doesn’t mean voters here are desperate to stay in.

DR DANIEL EVANS Cardiff University: The issues that people have been talking about, when they’re talking about the EU referendum, don’t seem to be about Welsh issues. They don’t seem to really seem aware of the amount of money that Wales has received from the EU. They really seem to be focussing more British wide issues – such as immigration, security and so on.

HG: Only 2% of people here were born outside the UK but, for the voters we spoke to, immigration is the key issue.

VOX POP FEMALE: The main concerns are people taking jobs and coming in and, with all the threats at the moment, it’s worrying because you don’t know who’s coming in and they’re not being vetted, and stuff like that.

VOX POP MALE: I think we’re far too lenient and lax with immigration. I think it should be tightened down.

VOX POP FEMALE 2: It probably has an impact but, obviously, you’ve got to have, you know, immigration and, you know, people coming in. You know, obviously, us going out to other parts of the EU, you know, so we can get jobs.

HG: Over in Abergavenny, at the end of the road, they’re desperate to keep every avenue open. The boss of this car parts company says he’s already had customers, like BMW and Audi in Germany, asking him what’s going to happen – just the uncertainty is bad for business.

GEOFF HANCOCK Managing Director, NSA Ltd: I think it’s the fear of the unknown. There’s a lot of ideas out there what could happen. But the fact is, we’re inside a marriage now which is working and why get divorced when there’s no need to?

HG: Wales can’t choose its own direction in this referendum, it’s the UK as a whole that will decide whether staying in or leaving is the right route to take. Hywel Griffith, BBC News.

May 25, 10.27pm – Undecided Voters in Worcestershire

HUW EDWARDS: Voters will go to the polls, four weeks tomorrow, in the referendum on Britain’s future in the EU and recent polls suggest that as many as a quarter of voters may not have decided yet whether to Remain or Leave. Our home editor, Mark Easton, is in Worcestershire tonight on the trail of the undecided voters. Let’s join him now.

MARK EASTON: Welcome to Worcestershire Huw, King John is buried in the cathedral behind me, and just across the city of Worcester is the scene of a famous victory for the parliamentarians in the English Civil War which is why the tourist brochures like to call it the home of British liberty and democracy. But when it comes to the EU referendum, Worcestershire is divided. All the local MPs are Conservatives, but they can’t agree on which way to vote, so I’ve been exploring what I call the agony of the undecideds. The jewel of the Cotswolds, the village of Broadway epitomises what JB Priestley called “the most English landscape, Conservative, with large ‘C’ and small it is an ancient place with a polished patina of self-assurance and conviction.” But when it comes to the EU referendum, resident Tories, like Peter Reading, find themselves undecided. His daily newspaper, and his party of course, seem equally unclear. Outside the Broadway Hotel, I met Peter and his wife Joan, among the 20% of Conservative voters who say they still haven’t made up their mind.

JOAN READING: There are people on either side, on the yes and the no, who you admire their views and yet suddenly they’re antagonistic views and it’s who do you believe? Which side do you go for?

PETER READING: I think my default position is probably to go out, but my head tells me that perhaps I should stay in, but I want to see the argument persuade me to stay in.

ME: You don’t feel that? No. What about you, Joan?

JR: It’s, I think, as Peter said, it’s almost a head and heart situation. You know, I’m British, I’m proud of being British and the things that we stand for.

PR: Let me give you an example. If I go to our largest Tesco’s here, there are two long aisles full of Polish food. I believe that countries will always evolve but, at the moment, it is more like a revolution.

JR: You know, why couldn’t we have some economists do a for and against without being biased? It’s getting . . .

ME: You want the facts, don’t you?

JR: I want the facts!

ME: Clear, unambiguous, unbiased.

JR: Yeah, I’m a scientists. I want the facts.

ME: It’s a refrain you hear over and over again. People say they want more facts. They want the arguments clearly set out. And that’s probably why politicians are reporting large numbers turning up at village and town hall meetings and referendum debates, far more than at the general election. In the Cap and Gown, in central Worcester, the saloon bar is packed for a debate on the EU. There are supporters from both camps and the undecideds are here, too.

VOX POP FEMALE: I think what’s difficult is dealing with all the nonsense and all the facts, (makes ‘quotes’ symbol with fingers) ‘facts’ that are coming out on both sides and I find I can’t believe any of them.

VOX POP MALE: But I’m open-minded to change, if I get a sensible argument and so far I have not seen a logical, sensible argument.

VOX POP FEMALE 2: You know, none of us have voted yet, we still can all be swayed in either direction, can’t we?

IN CAMPAIGNER: I think we’re definitely better where we are in the EU.

OUT CAMPAIGNER: We, from the Get Out campaign, do not wish to join the single market. Trade deals don’t sell goods . . .

ME: Normally in politics people stick to well-trodden, tribal paths, but the EU debate has left many feeling they’re lost in the jungle.

CHAIR: In favour of the motion, that being in the EU is good for business?

ME: On the night, Remain narrowly won the debate, but many were still undecided.

VOX POP FEMALE3: I don’t know. I’m… I’ve seen a lot of talking heads and I’d like to look at raw data.

VOX POP MALE 2: People say one thing, people say another thing and you never know who’s telling the truth or who’s right.

ME: Voters are having to do their own homework, consider the arguments, test the claims. Whatever the result, the process has at least been refreshing for our democracy. Mark Easton, BBC News, Worcestershire.

May 26, 10.21pm – Hebrides

SARAH SMITH: In [the BBC TV debate from Glasgow, aired earlier], the Leave side then went on to argue that the money saved from not paying contributions into the European Union could be spent here in the UK on public services. Now, they were arguing about issues that matter across the UK. If you look at opinion polls here in Scotland, it’s very interesting: consistently about two thirds of voters here say they would like to remain in the EU. And I’ve been round the country asking voters what issues matter most to them, starting off in the Hebrides. Navigating through the swell of arguments in the EU debate looks a little different in Scotland’s more remote communities. On the Isle of Islay, the ferry docks at a harbour entirely rebuilt with millions of pounds of European funding. And Europe consumes about half of the island’s exports of Scotch whisky. A recent surge in sales has seen the Bruichladdich Distillery brought out of mothballs, and it’s now producing over a million bottles a year, providing much-needed jobs.

CARL REAVEY Bruichladdich Distillery In here you’ve got the sweet . . . (word unclear) from the . . .

SS: They’re convinced leaving the EU could have dire consequences for an industry the island relies on.

CR: It has really lifted the local economy in a very dramatic way. And the thought that it might actually be threatened in some way is really quite scary, and the idea that we may return to those dark ages, which many, many, many people on this island will remember, doesn’t bear thinking about.

SS: Whisky is one of Scotland’s biggest exports. Bruichladdich admit they don’t know what would happen to sales if we leave the EU, but say even that uncertainty could delay investment and cost jobs. Of course, people won’t choose how to vote based purely on whether or not they think EU membership is good for business. Less than two years after the independence referendum here in Scotland, voters know this is a decision which is not just about economics. The EU referendum also raises questions of identity and sovereignty. Voters must look into their hearts as well as their heads. In Edinburgh, people who are campaigning on each side to leave and to remain, think perceptions of national identity may help explain how Scots will vote.

LAURIE PRESSWOOD Remain Campaigner: We’re very used to having a sort of split identity. So, you know, we would identify ourselves as being both Scottish and also British, which, I know they’re two quite separate identities, so I think perhaps we’re more accepting of having this third European identity.

SS: Whilst those who want to leave feel they have lost control of the decisions that govern their lives.

MORVEN ALLISON Leave Campaigner: There’s a lot of things that we don’t get our say in because of the EU having their own rules. Like, we’ve thought of, like, tons of things that we would like to control over here, but they take them over to the European Union and they’re like, ‘no, you can’t have that, you can’t have that.’ And it’s not . . . it’s not correct.

SS: There are plenty of sceptics in Scotland. In what remains of the country’s industrial belt near Glasgow, workers worry about immigration and its impact on jobs.

ALASTAIR MACMILLAN: These are all fork lift pumps, principally for Japanese trucks . . .

SS: In a factory full of hydraulic pumps, many of which are destined for Europe, worries about the economic impact of leaving the EU are dismissed. Trade will continue, they’re certain.

AM: I think we’re to get out of this perception that if we leave the EU, we’re pulling up a drawbridge at Calais and we’re saying, ‘Right, we’re off on our own.’ That’s not going to happen, that’s . . . pragmatically, realistically, that is not going to happen.

SS: Intriguingly, the parts of Scotland most eager to leave the UK and become independent are also the parts most likely to vote to remain in the EU. If they do so in large enough numbers, it could be Scottish votes that keeps Britain in. If that does happen, if there’s a tight vote, and it is seen to be a majority of Scots who voted to stay in the EU that keeps the whole of the UK inside, that could cause repercussions throughout the United Kingdom, there could be resentment about that. But if it goes the other way, if there’s a vote to leave, but a majority of Scots did vote to remain, well, Alex Salmond the former leader of the SNP, he said at this debate here tonight, he thinks that that would trigger a second referendum on Scottish independence, that within the two years in which Britain was negotiating to leave the EU, there would be another vote here in Scotland as to whether or not Scotland should leave the UK. The repercussions of this may be felt for quite some time to come.

HE: Indeed, Sarah, thanks very much. Sarah Smith our Scotland editor in Glasgow.

May 27, 10.20pm – England and Englishness (Knowsley)

FIONA BRUCE: Now, four weeks from today, we’ll know the answer. Will the UK be staying in or leaving the European Union? All this week, we have been hearing people’s views across the UK about the referendum. Tonight, we’re focusing on England and Englishness. Our Home Editor, Mark Easton, reports from Knowsley on Merseyside.

MARK EASTON: There’s nowhere in Britain as white, English and Christian as Knowsley. Immigration has barely touched this area. Only 2% of residents were born outside the British Isles. But it’s also the second most deprived neighbourhood in England, a place anxious about change. Experts have looked at all the numbers and concluded that this area should be among the most Eurosceptic in the country. But is it?

VOX POP MALE: I personally think we should stay in.

ME: Do you?

VPF: For economic viability.

VOX POP FEMALE: The country is getting a bit too overpopulated. And we need to, erm . . .

ME: Pull up the drawbridge?

VPF: Yeah, 100%, that’s the word. (laughs)

VOX POP MALE 2: I’m going to vote stay in.

ME: Really?

VPM2: Yes. Purely for security reasons.

VOX POP MALE 3: I like being part of Europe. I don’t want to be out of it.

ME: You’re going to get a vote in a few weeks, which way do you think it will be, in or out?

VOX POP MALE 4: Out.

VOX POP FEMALE 2: Out!

VPM4: Out. And sooner, the bloody better! (laughs)

ME: It is only a snapshot, but it does seem opinions are more nuanced than simple analysis of the polls suggests. The referendum issues are complicated and disputed, far removed from the realities of people struggling to get by in one of the poorest and least-educated communities in the country. How do you feel about the European Union referendum?

VOX POP FEMALE 3: What does that mean?

ME: Really?

VPF3: (laughter in voice) I don’t know what that means.

ME: The polls suggest that places like this are more likely to want to leave the EU and there is clear anxiety about the perceived threat from outsiders.

VOX POP FEMALE 4: My opinion is, get all the English in here and get all the Polish out. We can’t even get a house, the Polish get everything before we get them.

VPF3: There’s more foreigners coming into our country and it’s hard enough for us to get jobs, but they seem to be getting jobs thrown at them, where we can’t get a job in our own country.

ME: So you, you’d like to leave the EU?

VPF3: No, I wouldn’t like to leave the EU, but what I’m saying is, it’s all changed now, hasn’t it?

ME: It is a hard one, isn’t it?

VPF3: Yeah, it is proper hard.

ME: It is proper hard. The fear of change from being in the EU against the fear of change from being out. English nationalism tends to mean support for the Leave campaign. It is easier to love England than the EU. But in The Bulldog pub down the road, again, it’s not quite as simple as that.

VOX POP FEMALE 5: I think we’re a small area, small unit in the world. I’m not sure that being alone, we could fight anything. I think it makes us vulnerable.

VOX POP MALE 5: We’re a small country, maybe in size of square footage compared to the likes of say Spain. We are British. We are a strong nation. We used to have a strong army. We used to have a strong air force and a strong navy.

VPF5: But I’m not sure going out and staying in there is going to be that much difference, actually.

VPM5: So why vote for staying in?

VPF5: Because it makes me feel comfortable.

VPF5: Yeah, that’s your opinion. That’s fine.

ME: What the people of Knowsley seem to be telling us is that if they vote in the referendum, it won’t be based on class or party allegiance, but on what makes them feel more secure, and the reason it’s so hard to call is that they know both options carry risk. Mark Easton, BBC News, Knowsley.

Refrendum Blog: May 28

EU Referendum Blog | 28th May 2016 | by David Keighley

THE DOG THAT DIDN’T BARK? A poster published by the pressure group Operation Black Vote (OBV) showing a skinhead thug intimidating a sari-wearing immigrant – and aimed, say OBV, at encouraging ethnic turnout in the EU referendum – has been strongly attacked by the ‘leave side as divisive, negative stereotyping.

But the BBC has virtually ignored the controversy over the tactics and imagery being deployed. Coverage was confined to an outline website story, a short interview on Radio 4’s World Tonight with the head of OBV and a Ukip spokesman, and brief, one sentence mentions on BBC1’s News at Six and on BBC2’s Newsnight.

By comparison, when Boris Johnson, of the ‘exit’ side, mentioned President Obama’s Kenyan ancestry, BBC coverage was extensive across all outlets and included very strong attacks on Johnson’s motivation, with clear, repeated insinuations that he was being racist.

OBV is funded by left-leaning and EU-supporting trusts Esme Fairbairn and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

OBV’s advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi, who designed the poster, say that the aggressive imagery in their poster is necessary and appropriate because the political campaigning has so far failed to cut through to the 4 million target audience.

Director Simon Woolley, in his The World Tonight appearance on Wednesday evening, said the poster was in response to ‘toxic’ claims about immigration by the ‘leave’ side in the EU debate. These included the mentions of President Obama’s Kenyan ancestry and an unwarranted attack on ‘diversity’ by Nigel Farage, the leader of Ukip,

Daily Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn is among those who has strongly attacked the poster. He observed:

Using grotesque racial stereotypes to scare white people is as despicable as it is desperate. This type of rabid propaganda has no place in an advanced democracy.

So what’s the difference between this hypothetical Vote Leave advert and the genuine poster campaign wheeled out by Operation Black Vote, which is led by a member of the Remain camp?

It features two people sitting face-to-face on a see-saw. One is an elderly Asian woman in a sari; the other a tattooed white skinhead jabbing his finger aggressively and snarling in her direction. The poster is going up on 37 digital billboards in London and Manchester in the run-up to polling day.

The justification for this demagogic imagery is that it is designed to encourage members of ethnic minorities to vote in the referendum and counter the ‘demonisation’ of foreigners and people of colour’ by the Leave campaign.

But the clear, not even subliminal or subtle, implication is that those who want to get out of the EU are all knuckle-scraping BNP boot-boys brimming with hatred for non-whites.

So why did the BBC virtually ignore the poster?

In the website copy about it, the headline is simply: EU referendum: White ‘thug’ poster aimed at black voters’. The story lays out that Nigel Farage had said the approach was ‘disgusting’, an example of ‘sectarian politics’ and was trying to ‘divide society’.

But the bulk of the copy is focused on the OBV perspective., and contains quotes from both OBV director Simon Woolley and Magnus Djaba, chief executive of Saatchi and Saatchi, who was responsible for the poster design. Most prominent is Djaba’s claim:

This is a message about democracy, not a message about race. Whichever community you’re from, it hits home.

The only other substantial mention of the poster on in The World Tonight, Simon Woolley was given clear space to make claims that echoed the website story and to amplify the message that elements of the debate had descended into race and ‘diversity’ based toxicity. The presenter made no effort to challenge the use of the ‘thug’ imagery. Her main intent was to allow Woolley to explain why he thought it was necessary.

Steven Woolfe MEP, the Ukip spokesman on migration, was placed on the back foot by Wooley’s claims and the clear undertone that Ukip was being racist. His main focus was thus rebuttal. As a result, he had only minimal opportunity to state that he believed the poster’s imagery was provocative, and the presenter did not explore further – her main focus was to give Woolley the opportunity to put his case.

Both The World Tonight and the BBC website, in the only mainstream coverage of this story, thus gave only minimal exposure to the alleged controversy over the poster’s imagery, and indeed, arguably glossed over it. They publicised the poster gave OBV opportunity to put its case, but showed only minimal editorial curiosity about the extensive reaction to it, or to the debate about OBV’s motives.

Evidence of this was on Wednesday’s edition of Newsnight shortly after the World Tonight item was broadcast. As detailed by News-watch here, reporter Katie Razzall, explored at length the ethnic minority communities’ reactions in the Midlands to the referendum debate. The only mention of the poster was at the end. She said:

Operation Black Vote said today a third of Britain’s 4 million or so BAME voters are not actually registered. Today the organisation released this controversial poster in an attempt to encourage them to do so. Because minority voters’ apparent support of Remain could prove decisive, but only if they turn out to vote.

She thus acknowledged the controversy, showed the poster, but chose not to explore further, even though it was arguably of direct relevance.

Her approach was in line with the BBC as a whole. They acknowledged a story and an organisation whose prime motives in devising this imagery were to purse the pro ‘diversity’, pro-immigration and pro-EU perspectives, but virtually ignored the controversy surrounding it.

Craig Byers: Here is the news. BBC bias revealed hour by hour

BBC Bias, EU Referendum, Immigration | 13th May 2016 | by Craig Byers

Thursday was ‘the big day’ at the BBC, and yesterday morning’s Today was all over Mr Whittingdale’s Charter Review report.

Did the BBC treat the story impartially?

Well, on Today there was Lib Dem peer Lord Lester QC sticking up for the BBC. And Labour’s Tessa Jowell sticking up for the BBC. And former BBC, Sky and ITV employee Professor Lis Howell half-criticising and half-sticking up for the BBC. And BBC presenter Nick Robinson not exactly firing, in ‘devil’s advocate’-style, on all impartial cylinders either.

They did have the SNP’s John Nicholson, for ‘balance’ though, demanding a Scottish News at Six – and getting a rough ride from Mishal Husain in the process. ‘Who wants that?’ was Mishal’s basic point. (A fair point, probably).

Impartial? Hardly.

And then came The World at One on BBC Radio 4. And that was even worse.

After a short review of events in Parliament came a discussion between the BBC’s Martha Kearney and Steve Hewlett of the Guardian/BBC Radio 4’s Media Show, which suggested the Charter review wasn’t as bad as the BBC and its supporters feared, but that there are still issues of concern for them.

Then came a much shorter interview with Peter Bone MP, a BBC critic. It was the ‘balancing item’ -even though it lasted barely more more than a minute (the shortest interview by far).

Astonishingly, Martha forcefully stopped him in his tracks as as soon as he raised what he described as his “main concern”: BBC pro-EU bias. Martha clearly wasn’t going there for anything in the world. Realising that, Mr Bone just laughed.

Then came Jesse Norman MP saying that the government’s plan is great and the BBC is great.

Then came Labour-supporting former BBC Trust boss Sir Michael Lyons (not that Martha even hinted at such a thing) attacking the Government for going too far but saying that there is a problem with BBC bias: bias against Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn. A somewhat-startled-sounding Martha Kearney not only didn’t cut him off when he raised it (in contrast to how she treated Peter Bone when he tried to air his concerns about pro-EU BBC bias) but actually went on to press his pro-Labour ‘BBC bias’ point with Lord Hall.

And Lord Hall was the big WATO interview.

He didn’t agree with Sir Michael about the BBC’s anti-Corbyn bias (you won’t be surprised to hear), saying that the BBC is impartial (you also won’t be surprised to hear) and that the BBC brings “light to controversy”.

Lord Hall sounded pleased with what the Government has announced. The BBC’s Martha (gently) pressed him largely from a pro-BBC, Wolf Hall director Peter Kosminsky-type standpoint rather than an anti-BBC Andrew Bridgen MP-type standpoint.

And that was that: Lots of pro-BBC types having their say, plus (very briefly) Peter Bone.

Impartial? Hardly.

Meanwhile over on BBC One’s News at One bulletin we got more of the same, plus three items on the EU referendum: Mark Carney of the Bank of England’s dire warnings of the economic dangers of voting to leave the EU came first. A little later came the Vote Leave/ITV spat over whether Nigel Farage should be involved in a TV debate with David Cameron. And finally, immediately before the sports news (i.e. as the last ‘serious’ news item), came the news that the ONS has finally conceded that immigration from the EU has been massively under-represented in the government’s official figures (not that the short BBC news item put it like that) – a point that many people have been saying might well give a huge boost to the Leave campaign.

So why did BBC One choose to ‘bury’ that story as a very short new item near the end of its lunch time news bulletin?

Wasn’t that Peter Bone’s point being proved?

Impartial? Hardly.

And then came BBC’s News at Six.

BBC One’s News at Six began with another pro-Leave point: Bank of England governor Mark Carney’s dire warnings about a vote to leave the EU:

A warning from the Bank of England: Leaving the EU could trigger a recession.

The bulletin’s reporting was ‘impartial’ in the BBC sense, in that:

(a) the bulletin kept using words like “stark” and “strong” to describe the governor’s comments.
(b) the BBC’s economics editor Kamal Ahmed, after laying out Mr Carney’s anti-Brexit case in detail, said that “many economists agree with the Bank’s gloomy prognosis” and then featured one such economist doing just that…
‘…balanced’ by (c) a clip of Norman Lamont saying, very briefly, that Mr Carney is wrong…
and then (d) BBC political reporter Alex Forsyth setting the context by saying that Mr Carney’s intervention is “undoubtedly a boost” to the Remain campaign as Mr Carney is “a senior, credible figure once again warning in no uncertain terms of the economic risks of leaving.

ITV’s early evening news bulletin also led with that pro-Leave point and, like Kamal Ahmed, ITV’s deputy political editor Chris Ship also laid out the governor’s concerns in some detail.

Unlike the BBC, however, Chris Ship also said “the truth is” that the economic forecasts aren’t great at the moment whichever way we vote, and his ‘talking heads’ included two people who disagreed with Mr. Carney: John Redwood and Wetherspoons boss Tim Martin – both making substantive points against the BoE governor.

ITV struck me as taking its ‘impartiality’ responsibilities far more seriously than the BBC there. The BBC felt outrageously one-sided in comparison.

And after giving us its Mark Carney coverage ITV then moved straight onto the EU immigration question – for many Brexiteers the big story of the day – and those ONS figures with Chris Ship giving us James Brokenshire on one side and Liam Fox on the other, plus talk of economists claiming immigration is good for us on one side and Leave supporters saying we can’t control our border on the side, plus mention of the “true scale” of immigration and the figures taking us into “unprecedented” territory.

The BBC, in contrast, didn’t move straight onto the EU immigration story. It moved on to other stories instead. And we had to wait until nearly the end of the bulletin again for the EU immigration story to appear. And, again, it was given short shrift.

The BBC newsreader, George Aligiah, introduced it as being a case of Leave campaigners “saying” and the ONS “clarifying”. It’s “quite complicated”, said George. Yes, it’s “not very easy”, said the BBC’s Tom Symonds. Tom said that “Eurosceptics say” it’s an underestimate but “the nation’s number-crunchers” have “tried to explain it today” as being just a matter of short-term migrants. He elaborated somewhat on the the ONS’s explanation, explaining their case in a tone of patient reasonableness. Then he said: Eurosceptics say this, the government says that.

‘BBC impartiality’ duly fulfilled. Story duly downplayed. For those who think that the government shamelessly ‘managed’ this story today (the ONS figures being released on the day the BBC was fixating on itself), this might suggest the government was ‘aided and abetted’ by the BBC here.

Is ITV biased? Is the BBC biased?

On the strength of this I’m definitely going with the latter.

Maybe the Charter review should have focused more on that.

This article first appeared on The Conservative Woman

Photo by Ben Sutherland

MARDELL: ANTI-BREXIT BIAS CONTINUES

EU Referendum, World This Weekend | 4th May 2016 | by Andrew

Analysis of 15 editions of World This Weekend from January 24 – May 1

The programme is presented by the BBC’s former ‘Europe’ editor, Mark Mardell.

Under his watch, the programme has worked consistently hard to present the arguments for ‘remain’, given more time to ‘remain’ supporters, and has featured most heavily stories which favour the remain side. It has paid much less attention to the leave case. At least seven of the editions have been heavily skewed in favour of the remain side; none has strayed even marginally the other way.

No edition has set out with claims from the ‘exit’ side on the ascendant, or has sought as its main editorial thrust to push the ‘remain’ side to justify their stance.

A recurrent editorial approach has been the investigation of divisions over the EU within the Conservative party. There has been no equivalent exploration within Labour of issues such as the impact on the working class vote of the parliamentary party’s strong support of EU immigration policies.

The partisanship of the editorial policy is perhaps best epitomised by tweeting from the programme on April 17, which sought to highlight that Lord Hill, the UK’s European Commissioner, was warning that British agriculture would face severe financial problems if Brexit occurred. Such front-foot promotion of the ‘remain’ arguments confirms the programme’s partisan approach.

PROGRAMME BIAS

News-watch analysis recorded in site blogs has already established that three editions of the programme since January 24 were seriously biased in favour of the ‘remain’ case. The sequence from Portugal on February 7 (also analysed here h/t Craig Byers) looked at attitudes in that country to the UK’s requests for benefits and immigration reform. All the speakers including those from the Portuguese government, were strongly in favour of free movement and the current EU regime in that respect. The discussion afterwards was focused on the EU referendum and gave far more time to former CBI chairman Sir Mike Rake, the ‘remain’ spokesman, against Richard Tice, a supporter of Laeve.EU. The full programme analysis, in the form of a complaint submitted to the BBC, is at Appendix A.

The edition of February 28 focused on that The British Disease’ – discontent with the EU – could ‘be catching’. Explaining what this meant, Mark Mardell emphasised that this included the rise of the ‘hardline anti-immigration party’ in Denmark. The Czech Republic’s Europe minister Thomas Prouza warned that a British exit could force Europe back ‘towards the Russian sphere of influence’. Bruno Grollnisch, an MEP from the Front National in France, countered that the British were setting a good example and showing that renegotiation with the EU could be achieved. BBC correspondent Nick Thorp, reporting from Hungary, said that ’populist right winger’ Viktor Orban, the prime minister, was promising a referendum. The goal was ‘defending his country from immigrants’ and he was thus popular with many other Eastern European countries. Finally, Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek government minister, warned that the EU was collapsing, but wanted integrated action by the EU to prevent this. Overall, the item suggested that ‘British contagion’ – linked to right-wing populism – was spreading across Europe and was endangering the EU itself. The main manifestation of the ‘contagion’ was in anti-immigration movements, with pro-EU figures suggesting that on the one hand there was a danger of ‘Europe’ being pushed closer into the Russian orbit, and on the other without steps towards greater unity, the EU would collapse, unleashing a 1930s-style depression and other consequences.

On March 20, the EU-related feature looked briefly at the resignation from the government of Iain Duncan Smith, and then the impact on business of staying in or exiting the EU. Mark Mardell spoke to two business owners with divided opinions. The questions put to the ‘exit’ supporter were much tougher than one who wanted to remain, and were designed to show that ‘exit’ would create potential problems. There was a contribution from Stuart Eizenstat, a former economic advisor to President Clinton, who said that leaving the EU would be a ‘disaster for the UK’. There would be economic stagnation no trade deal with the US. Gordon Ritchie, who had negotiated Canada’s recent trade agreement with the EU suggested that a better deal could be achieved by the UK. Mark Mardell, despite Mr Ritchie’s answer, persisted in focusing on how difficult such deals were, and then whether it would be easier to focus on a Commonwealth deal. Sir Andrew Khan, of The City UK, who Mardell said had previously been in charge of the UK’s government body promoting exports, said he was in favour of staying in the EU and claimed it would take 10 years to reach trade deals with countries like China. He further claimed that leaving the EU would lead to 20 years of sub-optimal growth. Mardell then interviewed Peter Lilley. He attacked the idea that it would not be possible to reach a deal with the US or China. Overall, this was less blatantly biased than the Portugal edition, but by far the most prominence and emphasis was given to the obstacles to leaving the EU.

The edition of April 10 was based on a meeting of an Italian think-tank in Lake Como, and it was particularly biased against the ‘exit’ case. They had gathered there, it was said, to discuss global economic problems including the possible impact of Brexit. Mark Mardell interviewed a former adviser to President Obama, a Chinese economist, a German government minister and the president of a major global investment fund (Allianz), all of who attacked this ‘stupid’ (as one contributor said) and damaging prospect. In their collective eyes, membership of the EU was unquestionably vital to the UK’s future. Their contributions were followed by a live interview with Labour donor and Vote Leave supporter John Mills, who Mardell introduced only as ‘the founder of a mail order company’. His tone and approach changed immediately – he was much more adversarial. To be fair, Mills was given a far crack of the whip in answering the points raised – and gave credible answers – but it was his contribution was in a much narrower channel, and he was subjected to more scrutiny. Mardell’s editing meant that the pro-EU side appeared more authoritative and more polished.

On April 17, the main focus was a warning from Lord Hill, the UK’s European Commissioner, that outside the EU, British agriculture would face a very bleak future, and farmers would receive less subsidy. The programme elected to tweet this warning (without any balancing material) as an important development in the referendum debate. In his introduction to the item, Mark Mardell noted that Brexit and remain supporters had been trading insults over the warning, then said that David Cameron had claimed that farmers could lose up to half their income and also face 70% tariffs on their exports. The first part of the feature was interviews with two farmers, one in favour of leaving the EU, the other who claimed that the need was for a level playing field, and it would ‘get hilly’ if there was an exit. Mardell then interviewed Lord Hill and created a framework in which he could project strongly his negative claims about EU exit. Mardell’s main challenge was that this was ‘project fear’. Agriculture minister George Eustice was able to put across that he did not believe that farming would suffer on Brexit, or that exports to the EU would stop, but Mardell pushed hard that this was strongly disputed by the Treasury as well as David Cameron. Overall, the programme, in its tweets and the editorial structure, put most weight on the David Cameron/Lord Hill claims that agriculture would face serious threats if Brexit occurred. The balance provided through the appearance of George Eustice did not cancel this out.

More major bias featured in the edition of April 24, the weekend of President Obama’s visit to the UK. The problem here related to the weight that Mardell ascribed to the importance of President Obama’s intervention in the referendum debate. He amplified that he had taken a ‘wrecking ball’ to the Brexit case, and while Liam Fox was given the opportunity to respond to some of the points, his arguments were swamped by Mardell’s commentary and guest contributions that underlined the damaging nature of the president’s comments and also included opinion that the attack on him by Boris Johnson had been racist and ‘weird’. Mardell’s attitude and approach could be summed up by one of his introductory remarks:

The UK part of his farewell tour wouldn’t even count as a long weekend, but it might prove the most important 50 hours in the referendum campaign so far. Here was one of the most popular and powerful politicians in the whole world pulling no punches.

This was followed by:

It was a week when we could have been forgiven for being rather inward-looking, staring backwards at the past – a very British history-soaked week of pageantry, the anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, the Queen’s 90th birthday – time to revel in nostalgia for both the Elizabethan ages. And the Associated Press notes the President’s political intervention was “wrapped in appeals to British sentimentality”. But the blunt, unsentimental job he set himself was to send a wrecking-ball into the Leave campaigners’ case.

The May 1 edition examined what Mark Mardell claimed were ‘slogans’ by Brexit supporters about regaining control of the UK’s borders in order to limit immigration. Most of the programme focused on the views of figures who foresaw problems in trying to do so, or who thought immigration was in any case vital to the economy. The main speakers were John Vine, a former inspector of UK borders, who warned that it would be very difficult to introduce further border checks; Elmar Brok,the German MEP, who warned that any changes in border controls would meet with strong retaliation; Heather Rolfe, a spokesman for the ‘independent’ National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), who said that immigrant labour was benign and vital to the British economy; and Tim Martin, the managing director of pub chain Weatherspoon. The latter was said to be a supporter of Brexit, but he argued that immigration from the EU was vital to keep his service sector functioning. The recorded interviews were followed by an interview with Leave.EU founder, Aaron Banks. He argued that inequalities of wealth within the EU were creating the flows of people. What was needed was an Australian points system, with a cap of 50-60,000 annually. Mardell said the NIESR report showed that the British economy needed more people and was struggling to find them. Banks (AB) said the UK was a small island and there was a need for controls. Mardell (MM) said the boss of Weatherspoon’s wanted more migration. AB said he thought it was good but had to be at a pace that was reasonable. MM asked if the UK imposed a points-system, the EU would retaliate. AB said that was possible. MM asked if it was worth that. AB replied that open door immigration could not continue. MM said:

Because lots of people have different views on this, would you expect any vote in favour of leaving the European Union to be an instruction to a future government to control this immigration? Because some people might say, well (fragments of words, unclear) it’s more important to stay in the single market, and will accept free movement?

AB: Of course. That’s, I think, probably the main reason, isn’t it?

In summary, Mardell again placed most editorial emphasis on the ‘remain’ case. Banks responded on several of the points, but in the context of tough questioning which meant tht overall, the need for continued high levels of immigration came across most strongly.

CONCLUSION:

Seven of the 15 editions of TWTW from January 24 were thus heavily biased in favour of the ‘remain’ side. Analysis of the other programmes shows that there was nothing in any of them that offered counter-balance. Mark Mardell’s approach appears to be amplify the benefits of remain, and to investigate and expose in whatever ways he can problems of the Brexit case.

APPENDIX A

COMPLAINT: Mark Mardell on Portugal, World This Weekend 7/2/2016

This was a seriously unbalanced item that explored whether David Cameron’s proposed curb on in-work benefits for EU migrants would be accepted by Portugal. A report from Lisbon was followed by questions to two leading figures on each side of the British EU referendum debate. The interview sequence inexplicably gave more than double the space to the pro-EU case. Overall, Mark Mardell’s editing presented a one-sided view of the Portuguese attitudes to EU reform. Further, the pro-EU commentator, Sir Mike Rake, the past president of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) – whose background as a pro-EU campaigner was not properly identified to listeners – had the time and framework to advance a reasoned case that it was vital that the UK should stay in a reformed EU and that the David Cameron reform package was in Britain’s interests. Richard Tice of Leave.EU was afforded much less time (approximately two minutes compared with five and a half minutes) to outline why he disagreed, and he was pushed in his responses by Mr Mardell’s questions into a narrower and more negative framework.

SUBSTANCE

The purpose of the location report was to gather the views of ‘typical’ Portuguese young people opposed to David Cameron’s stance on reform of the EU, especially with regard to immigration and benefits.

The report showed that the Portuguese who had been to Britain had done so for work, not benefits. Were their views typical? – there was no way of knowing. Those selected for inclusion in the package wanted to come to the UK for a variety of positive reasons, and Mark Mardell edited their contributions to bring this out. Of the eight vox pop contributors who featured in the report, the only benefit claimant was a nurse who had become pregnant while in the UK. She felt it would have been unfair to stop her child benefit because she had paid taxes. All of the respondents felt that the Cameron approach was wrong. General comment was proffered that immigration was vital to the UK economy.

Mr Mardell also included a comment from the President of the Portuguese nursing organisation, who said that Britain needed nurses from abroad, and that stopping benefits of Portuguese immigrants was both unfair and would hit the NHS. She felt her country would oppose the plans at the EU level.

Mr Mardell then asked João Galamba, the Portuguese government’s economics spokesman, what he thought about Mr Cameron’s plans for curbing immigrant benefit claims. Mr Mardell mentioned that the government was anti-austerity, but did not say it was otherwise strongly pro-EU. The government spokesman asserted that Britain was asking for an unfair deal at the expense of other countries and should not get it. He further argued that the UK had received too much favourable treatment in the past. The answer to the immigrant question was that the EU should adopt a federal system of benefits, because that was the only way of dealing with the differences of approach in each country.

Back in the studio, Mark Mardell introduced Sir Mike Rake as ‘the chairman of BT’, and Richard Tice, who was said to be ‘one of the founders of Leave.EU.’ More should have been said to identify Sir Mike’s position: he is an immediate past-president of the CBI, which under his tenure strongly supported continued British membership of the EU. He is on record making strongly pro-EU remarks that were clearly intended to be part of the ‘in’ campaign.

In the sequence that followed, Mr Tice spoke 403 words and Sir Mike Rake, 1,098 words. The latter had 2.5 times more space to advance his case and on four occasions Mark Mardell allowed Sir Mike to speak more than 180 words without interruption, with his longest contribution extending to 306 words (1 min 26 seconds). By contrast, the longest Richard Tice contribution was just 168 words (57 seconds), and aside from one sequence of 152 words, none of his other contributions was longer than 32 words.

These ‘metrics’ confirm that Sir Mike Rake had over five and a half minutes of airtime to make contributions which combined to form a largely uninterrupted, multi-pronged and detailed case why Mr Cameron’s reforms were necessary and proportionate, and why Britain, for a variety of factors, should stay in the EU. Sir Mike spoke about how the UK had ‘benefited hugely’ from foreign direct investment, through being able to export to the European Union and beyond, and argued that there had been ‘enormous benefits’ from the free movement of labour, including in the health service and tourist and leisure industries. He said he believed the reforms being sought by the Prime Minister were sensible, given different standards of living within Europe, but that the UK itself has had a skills shortage, and it was important to have the ability to bring in those ‘who are really critically important to various aspects of our society.’ He said that the government’s own studies had shown that net migration had been ‘nothing but a benefit’ to the UK economy ‘at every level’, but he conceded that issues such as the refugee crisis were causing concern. On the question of Britain leaving the EU, Sir Mike said that his business would indirectly suffer, and pointed out that 45% of British exports go to the eurozone, including 53% of all manufactured cars, which creates ‘hundreds of thousands of highly paid jobs.’ He also made the point that although Britain’s gross contribution might look like a significant figure, in net terms it was not, because of previously negotiated rebates, grants and subsidies.

Mr Tice had only two minutes – in essence, two segments of a minute each – to advance a general case about why the UK should leave the EU, and why Mr Cameron’s ‘reforms’ were ineffective. Having been granted such limited space, he could only posit short one-dimensional declarations that trade with the rest of the world was now more important than that with the EU, that the EU economies were uncompetitive, that there was too much regulation and too many UK EU contributions. In his first answer, he said the prime minister’s plans to put a brake on immigration would not work. Immigration was needed, but not at current levels, and the red card system proposed by Mr Cameron to protect British interests was not new and was a ‘deception’.

The questions put to Sir Mike Rake by Mark Mardell were: whether the curb on benefits would discourage immigration, whether his reform package would work because the feature showed that immigrants came to Britain for factors such as higher wages rather than to claim benefits, whether it was a mistake by the Prime Minister to make the deal look ‘so pivotal’ and what it would mean for BT if the UK left the EU. He thus had a broad, open canvas against which to put his various points.

By contrast, Mr Tice was asked only one direct question: if the ‘emergency brake’ would work. It was then put to him negatively that leaving the EU ‘would be a huge leap in the dark, would it not’. He thus had a much narrower platform on which to advance his views.

CONCLUSION:

This was not a simple in/out item because the framework was whether Portugal would accept the reforms on the table. Asking whether the package could be vetoed and/or would be effective was an important line of inquiry. However, the item that was constructed was seriously imbalanced. From Portugal, Mark Mardell presented only opinions that were pro-EU, pro-immigration, and anti-the UK’s approach to change. In the discussion that followed, the views of Sir Mike Rake – clearly there to represent the ‘stay in’ side of the EU debate – were inexplicably allowed to be overwhelmingly dominant, with Sir Mike Rake’s contribution accounting for 73% of the total airtime, and Mr Tice just 27%. Richard Tice had the opportunity to put briefly a few points against Sir Mike’s stance, but from questions that forced him into much narrower explanation.

Another way of looking at the item overall is that there were at least 11 speakers who were essentially in favour of the EU’s current arrangements ranged against one speaker who was not. Weekly current affairs are not obliged to have balance of speakers and due impartiality in every edition, but when did The World This Weekend carry a feature which had such numbers of anti-EU speakers ranged against only one with pro-EU views? And is one planned? A second important point related to impartiality is that all the speakers from Portugal expressed similar views. There was no breadth of opinion, and no attempt was made to include opinion from figures with a more sceptical outlook.

Photo by theglobalpanorama

IEA BOOK SLAMS BBC BIAS

BBC Bias, News-watch | 28th April 2016 | by David Keighley

A book published today by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) about the future of the BBC contains a chapter in which research carried out by News-watch takes centre stage.

The key areas of output investigated included the daily religious/spiritual segment Thought for the Day, broadcast as part of the Today programme. News-watch analysed almost a thousand editions and found that its tone was overwhelmingly against business, economic enterprise, and capitalism.

This is the full version of the IEA press release about the book:

The BBC is no longer fit for purpose. Its market power – especially in terms of news provision – coupled with its compulsory funding method and its closeness to the political process is hugely problematic. Significant examples of bias undermine it further, whilst commercial competition risks rendering the BBC irrelevant.

In a new IEA report, authors call for the commercial privatisation of the BBC. The case for this is multi-faceted: technology and a changed commercial landscape have demolished the economic and practical arguments for the licence fee and the BBC’s privileged position, whilst the case for public service broadcasting is weaker than ever given increased competition through the internet.

New analysis of a number of case studies suggests the BBC exhibits relative biases in a number of areas. Though all media outlets are likely to have biases, the BBC’s is likely to be more problematic and change public opinion, given its trusted reputation, the inability for customers to withdraw payment and the fact it provides 75% of all televised news.

Problems with the BBC:

Bias by omission:

· Voices favouring Britain’s exit from the EU have tended to be under-represented on Radio 4’s Today Programme. From March 2004 to July 2015, there were 4,275 guest speakers on EU themes. Just 3% of these were explicitly in favour of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. Seven in ten of these speakers were from UKIP, and over a third were Nigel Farage alone.

· During the official 2015 General Election campaign, 25 business speakers discussed the EU referendum on the Today Programme. Over three-quarters of these speakers saw the referendum as a worry or a threat to business, despite polling finding two thirds of businesses back the holding of a referendum.

Bias by selection:

· In a sample of 976 separate editions of Radio 4’s Thought for the Day, 167 included discussions on economics, business and finance. Two thirds (65%) expressed a negative opinion on capitalism, markets and business, whilst just 8% gave any sort of positive perspective. Negative commentary outweighed positive commentary by a factor of more than eight to one.

Bias by presentation:

· Value judgements: A BBC journalist described OBR forecasts that spending levels as a proportion of GDP would likely fall to levels last seen in the 1930s as a ‘book of doom’ and ‘utterly terrifying’. Not only have these figures been heavily criticised, but even if they were comparable, the forecasts would see the UK government spending the same proportion of GDP as Australia.

· Misinformation: A third (24 of 78) of stories on the BBC website between 2012 and 2015 that mentioned ‘Amazon’ and ‘tax avoidance’ conflated corporation tax paid by companies with sales revenues – which has nothing to do with the tax base for corporation tax which is profit.

· Health warnings: Think-tanks associated with conservative and free-market analysis are much more likely to receive ‘health warnings’ on the BBC News website than think-tanks associated with more left-leaning positions.

Declining justifications for the licence fee and public service broadcasting:

· Technological transformation means it is now straightforward to exclude non-payers from receiving television signals.

· Multiplicity of platforms and devices means there is no longer a clear relationship between owning a television set and watching programmes, which are now available on computers, phones and tablets.

· Televisions are now portable and used for a variety of activities. The notion of a definable tax base for the licence fee has broken down.

· The justification behind public service broadcasting is also declining. In reality there is a wealth of channels, programming and other content. Maybe people don’t watch as much educational content as others think desirable, but this that cannot be solved by simply subsidising the creation of more such content. The main channels of public service broadcasters have seen their share of viewers nearly halve since 1991.

Bringing the BBC into the 21^st Century:

· The government should uncouple itself from the BBC and remove compulsory funding. In the era of programmes such as House of Cards, arguing that commercialisation leads to dumbing down is unconvincing. The BBC will also struggle going forwards without commercial freedoms; with just half of BskyB’s income, privatisation is needed for it to flourish on a global scale.

· Privatisation could not eliminate biases, but could lead to the viewing public becoming more appropriately sceptical. A privatised BBC would also bear a considerable commercial cost if its reputation were impaired.

· The BBC is fast becoming a minnow in international broadcasting, communication and entertainment world taken as a whole. If it remains nationalised it could become irrelevant. Already, the income from subscription to television broadcasters is twice the income from the licence fee received by the BBC.

· Other options include the BBC becoming a members’ organisation such as the National Trust, with members becoming licence fee payers. Alternatively it could be set up with a large trust fund and operate with a corporate governance structure. The Guardian, for example, is one of the most successful online journalism sources while being supported by a charitable trust.

Commenting on the report, Mark Littlewood, Director General at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said:

“The BBC needs a business and ownership model more appropriate than the one designed the best part of 100 years ago. Keeping a publicly funded broadcaster, with a Charter drafted by politicians, risks seeing the BBC eclipsed by new technology in the same way that Royal Mail has been eclipsed by email.

“The ending of the licence fee and the privatisation of the BBC would permit the BBC to compete freely and aggressively with other global media businesses.”

The links to it are here and (BBC bias chapter ) here. Iain Martin, the editor of web news and comment service, CapX has noted that the IEA research about Thought for the Day shows a deep anti-capitalist bias.

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