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Can new Culture Secretary Karen Bradley Sort Out BBC Bias?

Can new Culture Secretary Karen Bradley Sort Out BBC Bias?

These are frustrating times for those who want an end to BBC bias.

Post-Brexit, there has been a concentrated deluge of pro-EU, anti-Brexit broadcasting. The primary intent seems to be to force a second referendum and keep the UK in the EU. Evan Davis, as ever, is among those leading the charge.

The highly biased coverage of post referendum affairs shows that the Corporation is totally out of touch with the 17m who want out. Their version of ‘understanding’ them is to go to backstreets in the most deprived areas of the country and patronise the locals.

But the malaise goes much deeper. The reporting of Hinckley Point saga last week showed that yet again, their only agenda in the thorny issue of energy supply is that of the Green Blob.

In the BBC universe, fantasy ‘climate’ targets (espoused by the High Priests of EU-funded Greenpeace) to keep temperature rises below 1.5 degrees centigrade are considered far more important than the urgent need to keep millions of pensioners and young families warm at affordable prices.

Add to that their extreme reluctance to attribute terrorism to anything other than ‘mental illness’, and the BBC’s bloody-minded drive to undermine whenever possible British culture and tradition, and the overall picture of bias reaches crisis proportions.    There is a rot at the heart of the Corporation’s outlook that only an Augean cleansing will achieve.

John Whittingdale’s White Paper on BBC reform was published back in early May. Thanks to George Osborne’s meddling over the licence fee, it was sadly a fudge. Instead of effective change, including funding by subscription, which as an Institute of Economic Affairs paper has adroitly pointed out, would have genuinely opened the Corporation up and made it sensitive to viewers’ needs, it perpetuated the licence fee for another decade.

The other changes were thoughtful and significant but nowhere near enough. There was scrapping of the failed Trustees, budgetary scrutiny by the National Audit Office, and the creation of a new, souped-up Executive Board made up of a mixture of BBC executives and independent directors (including the chairman).

Further changes involved overall regulation by Ofcom on the performance and delivery of services, and as the body of appeal in matters of impartiality. This was the most glaring mistake. An end to BBC bias will only come about when the Corporation content is opened up to genuinely independent scrutiny. Ofcom is run by former BBC staff, with their same outlook, and so in this respect the White Paper was a total dud.

All this was thrown into turmoil after Brexit when Whittingdale was unceremoniously fired in the Cabinet shake-up. In his place Karen Bradley – elected as an MP (for Staffordshire Moorlands) for the first time only in 2010 – was elevated to Cabinet level from her previous (and only government) role as ministerial support for May in the Home Office.

There’s nothing wrong with injection of new blood, but it means that the Culture department is now being run by an accountant with no experience of media management at all and very little too, of what Bill Clinton called ‘change-making’ at government level. She is an ingénue when it comes to the Gormenghast-politics of the BBC.

The BBC, by contrast, has years of experience of seeing off challenges to its so-called independence, and indeed has battalions of staff trained to pursue that end. This does not bode well at all. Director General Lord Hall and his main henchman in this department, James Purnell – himself a former Culture Secretary – must currently be feeling like cats who have found the cream.

Bradley, of course, may turn out to be a tough cookie, and there is no rule that says a minister of state must have previous experience of the subject matter of his or her portfolio. Indeed, a fresh eye and an outside perspective can be a catalyst for genuine change.

However, broadcasting is not just any brief, and the BBC not just any adversary. Politicians of every stripe are star-struck and mesmerised by the Corporation. They are terrified that saying the wrong things will incur Auntie displeasure and disfavour.

This, disappointingly, became sharply apparent this week when the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee published with very little fanfare its report on its reaction to the Whittingdale White Paper. The findings? They have tamely accepted most of the fudged changes, turning their fire only on a relevantly minor issue, the high level of pay of some BBC talent.

Most tellingly, there’s not a peep about complaints handling.

On that basis, as things stand, the Corporation could well be off the hook yet again (unless Bradley surprises us all). It looks that for another decade the BBC public will be saddled with the licence fee, the deckchairs will be re-arranged slightly. And BBC bias will carry on relentlessly.

Photo by Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Mark Mardell wins Vince Cable award for balanced reporting as Germans warn of Brexit ‘nightmare’

Mark Mardell wins Vince Cable award for balanced reporting as Germans warn of Brexit ‘nightmare’

Mark Mardell, presenter of Radio 4’s The World This Weekend, has been on his travels again, this time to Berlin.  His purpose was to find out whether Germany – in his words the country that ‘ran Europe’ – would treat a UK exit from the EU with kid gloves or a mailed fist.  The structuring of the report left no doubt: Germany would be displeased.

His analysis was pitched in such a way that it prompted his studio guest, the former Liberal Democrat MP Vince Cable – arguably one of the most staunchly pro-EU figures  in the UK – to say that the conversation he’d had in Germany was ‘very balanced and very good’.  The ex-business secretary added for good measure:

The only real, heavy endorsement of the Brexit position came from that ex— that, er, the MEP from the extreme right wing German party, which is not an endorsement I would want.

What was that ‘conversation’ as edited and presented by Mardell?

He spoke first to the Reuters Brussels correspondent, who confirmed that there had been secret talks by the EU to deal with Brexit and to head of the (associated) rise in ‘far right’ parties.

Next stop was Artur Fischer, CEO of the Berlin Stock Exchange, who warned that if the UK decided to leave the EU, it would not enjoy the economic benefits that it currently enjoyed.

Christian Ehler, a senior MEP from Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrat party, warned that a European parliamentary report he had coordinated warned that a British exit would lead to a ‘nightmare’ – ’Mr Putin will laugh his butt off’.

Mardell noted that Ehler had also worked for Biotech, a multinational corporation, and asked for his reaction to Brexit in that capacity, too.   His response was that it would be ‘a disaster’ and ‘very messy’ and warned that jobs and big contracts involving companies such as Rolls-Royce in the supply of Airbus would be at risk.

The next interviewee was Daniela Schwarzer, director of what Mardell said was the ‘German Marshall Fund’s Europe programme’. What he did not say was this was an organisation set up in 1972 to foster stronger relations between the EU and the United States.

Schwarzer conceded that the UK might still be part of the Single Market, but warned that it would not be involved in the political decision-making of the EU. Prompted by Mardell, she also warned that it was important to stop (for the rest of the EU) the idea that this was ‘an easy game’ and to make it clear that a ‘visible cost’ was attached to leaving the EU.

Next up was MEP Beatrix van Storch, vice chair of the Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) party. This, stressed Mardell, was ‘Germany’s hard right party’, though he did not explain any of their policies or why they had earned that label.

Van Storch said first that from the German taxpayers’ point of view, she wanted the UK to stay in the UK because it was the second largest contributor to the EU budget. But she added that on the other hand, she wanted the UK to leave, to show that it could survive and not everything would break down. She asserted that it would be possible to trade with Europe without being part of the EU. To suggest otherwise was ‘complete rubbish’.

Mardell chose not to explore this further. Instead he asked whether the political elites would react by saying that other countries could not follow their lead ‘like the Front National in France…’ you are not asking Germany to leave but they would not want to…anything that would encourage you either, I guess’

Van Storch replied that any attempted punishments would only encourage ‘these movements’.

Mardell then – without explaining specifically why – spoke to two students, who he said had studied in London and Paris as well as Berlin. His point was presumably therefore that they had balanced views about the EU and ‘Europe’.  One duly said it would be a shame if Britain left the EU because it was ‘very valuable’. The other was worried that British exit would lead to the need for the re-introduction of visas.

The next interviewee was Artur Fischer again. This time he warned that nationalism was not a good thing. British exit would lead to Germany becoming nationalistic again, and that would lead to the ‘thin layer’ of civilisation collapsing. The EU created the chance of compromise; without it he warned that Germany would instead look for ‘a winning’.

Mardell’s final port of call was Juergen Maier, whom he introduced as MD of Siemens. What he did not say is that the company is possibly one of the most pro-EU businesses in any EU country, and that it has been warning for many years about any form of Euroscepticism.

Mardell asked him what sort of a deal the UK would get outside the EU, and then carefully coaxed him to spell out each of the various obstacles. He made no attempt to be adversarial.  Maier warned that barriers to the imposition of tariffs would first be taken down, then that new rules that disadvantaged the UK would be written – without the UK being round the table – then that German companies, along with those in the rest of the EU, would find it more difficult to invest in the UK, and finally that it would take much longer than two years to negotiate any new arrangements.

In summary in this report from Berlin, Mardell produced two senior industrialists, one senior politician and two students to say that Brexit would be a more or less unmitigated disaster and nightmare for the UK and would lead to the rise of nationalism and collapse of civilisation. Against this torrent of Europhilia, he produced one AfD politician and stressed that she was from the ‘hard right’.  At various points in the report, he stressed how much of a threat the ‘hard right’ was seen to be and how the EU was fighting to prevent forces such as the Front National in France.

Mardell’s report was bookended at the beginning and end with discussion involving Vince Cable and Gisela Stuart MP from the Vote Leave faction.   Mardell first put it to her that a Vote Leave letter warning about levels of immigration did not say how exit would allow better control of the problem. She said a new points system with the people’s consent would be devised at Westminster that better reflected the economic needs of the country.

His next question was whether there was any unease about the growing attacks on David Cameron. Stuart responded that he had not spelled out the consequences of remain or immigration at current levels.   After the Berlin report, Mardell suggested that the UK would not get the sort of trade deal it enjoyed through being in the EU.  Stuart replied that the euro was pulling the EU down and Britain was best outside.  Finally, he asked her if British exit would be the end of the EU and whether that would be a good thing. She replied that the UK departure would allow closer integration within the remaining EU. Britain needed to get out because current performance in the Eurozone was dragging the economy down.

Before the Berlin report sequence, Vince Cable – in response to Stuart’s points about immigration – argued that the UK had signed up to free movement under Margaret Thatcher and that all reports from economists showed that immigration was good for the economy. He attacked the Conservative party for making promises about levels of immigration it could not keep.  He emphasised that immigrants’ contributions to the UK were overwhelmingly positive and that they swelled the tax income of the Treasury. In the final sequence, he reinforced Maier’s warning that exit would generate very serious uncertainty, and, in turn, a fall in living standards and business opportunities. He warned that leaving the EU would take the UK out of the single market ‘which was absolutely fundamental to our manufacturing industry and the traded sector of the economy’. He concluded:

it’s completely unnecessary to walk away from that, with all the uncertainty and all the damage that that will create.

Overall, this The World This Weekend sequence had superficially reasonably balanced contributions from Gisela Stuart and Vince Cable. But in between was a report from Berlin by Mardell that presented with only minor tempering, a full-on case for ‘remain’.  Those who disagreed were described as ‘hard right’. In that context, Stewart’s arguments for exit were totally swamped by Mardell’s overt bias.

 

Transcript of The World This Weekend, Sunday 29 May 2016

Bulletins

DIANA SPEED:      The infighting within the Conservative party has intensified with senior MPs and the Leave campaign making personal attacks on David Cameron and some Eurosceptic backbenchers suggesting there could be a vote of no confidence in him after the referendum. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove accused Mr Cameron of corroding public trust by failing to meet a promise to cut immigration. Here’s our political correspondent Susana Mendonça.

SUSANA MENDONÇA:       The Leave campaign say this spat is about the UK’s ability to limit EU immigration, but the sight of two senior Conservatives Boris Johnson and Michael Gove accusing the prime minister in such a public way of undermining the trust that voters place in politicians has made this debate deeply personal. And the infighting hasn’t stopped there – the employment minister Priti Patel has gone a step further in her criticism, suggesting that Mr Cameron was too rich to care about people’s concerns regarding migration. All of this appears to have unleashed the wrath of Eurosceptic backbenchers Leave campaigner Nadine Dorries has called Mr Cameron an outright liar and said a letter was being circulated among backbenchers calling for a vote of no confidence in the prime minister, who she warned would be toast within days after the referendum even if remain narrowly won. Number Ten said the Leave campaign was just trying to focus attention away from the economic debate which it claimed Leave had already lost.

Main Story

MARK MARDELL: The prime minister stands accused in a letter from the Vote Leave campaign of corroding public trust by making a manifesto promise which it says is plainly not achievable while we stay in the European Union. That promise is to cut immigration to the tens of thousands; what makes the letter explosive is it’s signed by two of the most senior Conservatives who stood on that manifesto Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. But the issue itself is perhaps even more important than the impact on the Conservative party – the letter challenges the prime minister to admit that a vote to remain is a vote to permanently maintain free movement of people from the European Union including allowing what it calls economic migrants with or without a job, putting a strain on schools and hospitals and pressure on the wages of low paid British workers. To discuss that the former business secretary Liberal Democrat Sir Vince Cable and Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston Gisela Stuart who is the chair of Vote Leave and provides the third signature on that letter to the prime minister. Good afternoon to both of you. Gisela Stuart, first of all, conspicuous by absence in that letter is any way you would actually control immigration?

GISELA STUART:  It, actually, the letter has two points, first, it’s outlining the risks of remaining and it also makes it quite clear that whatever immigration policy you have, it has to have the consent of the people and therefore this is a letter which addresses both a democratic issue about consent, but also the economic consequences, particularly on the low paid if you don’t have control over immigration.

MM:       We, we know people are constantly (fragment of word, unclear) asking for facts in, in this debate, would you . . . are you talking about visas?  Are you talking about work permits, how would you control it if you got that power back?

GS:         Whatever system you end up with, and it will be a combination of something like an Australian points system, there’d be visa-free areas, but the key thing is, it’ll be, the decision will be made at Westminster in striking the balance between the economic needs of the country, the kind of skills we need and historic links, and it’s that absence of any control, combined with the economic pressures, because we’ve got an underperforming European economy, creates risk if we stay in.

MM:       So Vince, the letter is correct, isn’t it that without leaving the European Union you can’t fully control the migration of workers from Europe?

VINCE CABLE:      That’s correct, yes, it is a single market, it’s something the British sought originally and negotiated in Mrs Thatcher’s day, which is free trade in goods and services, free movement of capital, and free movement of labour, that’s the package, that’s what we bought into and it’s brought us . . .

MM:       (speaking over) Right, so, so it it . . .

VC:         . . . considerable benefits.

MM:       Is it correct that it corrodes public trust, because we can’t control that in a democracy?

VC:         I don’t think that (fragments of words, unclear) free movement of labour and the single market corrodes trust, but what has corroded trust – and this is one of the few points where I agree with Mr Gove and Boris Johnson – that when the Conservatives made this pledge to cut immigration to under 100,000 back in 2010, and then actually, foolishly, repeated it last year, for the very simple reason that you cannot directly control in a market economy levels of net migration.  It isn’t just free movement of labour in Europe, we can’t control immigration, we don’t have a wall to stop British people coming and going and the volume of people coming and going depends on the state of the economy.  And our total level of net migration also includes substantial numbers of people like overseas students, who are not immigrants at all.  So, the figure itself, I said repeatedly in government, my Lib Dem colleagues repeated it, this was a very foolish commitment to have made, and it has corroded trust, making a promise that could never be met.

MM:       Gisela Stuart, you’ve been on the battle bus with Boris Johnson, was there any sense of unease that they’re making this so personal, attacking the Prime Minister?

GS:         I think we, we have to challenge the Prime Minister who makes those promises, and . . . force him to spell out what the consequences of a Remain vote are.  And these consequences are spelt out in that letter: if you’ve got an underperforming economy in mainland Europe, and you cannot control people coming, then essentially, you will have huge pressures on . . . which will hit worse the low paid in this country.  And that is simply bad for this country, and the Prime Minister, I think, needs to answer the questions in that letter.

MM:       Sir Vince, you served in cabinet alongside these people, what do you think this sort of debate will do for, for them?

VC:         Well it’s not helping them, but can I just reply to Gisela’s points, which are perfectly fair.  Of course, there are immigration in some areas which do create pressure on some public services, though we do know from the work that’s been done that there is an overwhelmingly positive contribution to the British Treasury, therefore public spending from immigrant workers who are young and they pay taxes here, but one specific area I was responsible for in the coalition and that was low pay, and the Low Pay Commission on the minimum wage, and, and the simple truth of the matter is that low pay is protected, provided it’s enforced by the minimum wage. And . . . added to of course, tax credits, which I also believe in, and that’s the way to deal with low pay, and all of the research we did in the coalition government showed that there was very little impact of migrant workers for (sic, means from?) Europe on, on pay amongst low paid . . .

GS:         (speaking over) But the . . .

MM:       Vince Cable, Gisela Stuart, thanks very much.  We’ll be talking to you again in a moment, but the other great debate within the referendum campaign is what leaving would mean for our economy.  A lot would hang on what sort of deal we could do with the rest of the European Union. The first, secret, talks have taken place in Brussels about how to cope if Britain does leave, vote to leave in 25 days from now. Alistair Macdonald is the Brussels Bureau chief for the Reuters news agency and broke the story.

ALISTAIR MACDONALD:     Whatever the result is, the EU will have to respond and they want to respond in some kind of co-ordinated manner. We know that senior officials in Jean-Claude Juncker’s office, his chief of staff chaired a meeting at the beginning of this week with senior diplomats and ambassadors from a number of key countries, particularly France and Germany with a number of countries also involved, notably Slovakia and Malta who will be running the rotating chairmanship for European Councils over the next 12 months starting in July.

MM:       Any hints at all about what the attitude might be if Britain did vote to leave, what they might say?

AM:        They will say, almost certainly, they regret the British decision, that they respect the will of the British people and there’ll be a third, perhaps less clear message which is: this is going to be very painful for you, which is a way of saying, ‘please don’t anybody else try this at home’ they will want to head off centrifugal forces in other countries, they do not want Marine Le Pen in France, the Dutch Geert Wilders or a whole number of other Eurosceptic forces in Europe to take heart from this and start agitating.  So décourager les autres – as they say in Brussels.

MM:       Alistair Macdonald from Reuters. Indeed, there’s an irony here: if the UK votes to leave, the internal politics of the European Union might matter more than ever before for Britain’s future.  Would Europe’s biggest power, Germany, want to treat others with kid gloves or deal a blow with a mailed fist? I’ve been to Berlin to try to judge the mood.  In a big Berlin store, the sound from high-end hi-fi’s and speakers and headphones is testimony to Germany’s technological prowess, as are the rows of red toasters and espresso machines.  Outside, there’s a queue of Mercedes taxis.  Germans are proud of what they make and we like it to, last year, the exported £67 billion worth of goods to the UK, we were there third most important export market after the US and France, and they wouldn’t want to put that at risk, would they? Artur Fischer is CEO of the Berlin stock exchange.

ARTUR FISCHER:  In Europe, we agree on a number of rules in order to take down the trade barriers.  And Great Britain doesn’t like some of the rules.  Now, our industry will be against any kind of trade barrier, be it for countries inside the EU or outside the EU, they obviously don’t want it.  I work two days a week in London, and because of the EU, because of agreements, I don’t have to ask for a work permit, I just go over there and I work.  However, from a political point of view I’m pretty sure that Great Britain will not enjoy, after they left the EU, the benefits they currently have.

MM:       Berlin is not Europe’s economic powerhouse or manufacturing centre, but this friendly, attractive city is one of its political centres.  And I’m in the political quarter.  Fountains are playing in front of the white-walled, tinted glass cube that is the Kanzleramt – the Chancellor’s office.  Outside, fly side-by-side the German and the EU flags.  Angela Merkel runs a Germany from here, and arguably Europe, at least what she says matters hugely. Christian Ehler, is an MEP and senior member of her party, the Christian Democrats – and industry committee coordinator in the European Parliament, where some are braced for Brexit.

CHRISTIAN EHLER:             We were asked by the general secretariat what would be the result of an exit, and our report back has been pretty much easy, saying it will be a nightmare for three years. And I mean, Mr Putin will laugh his butt off.

MM:       Christian Ehler is wearing cufflinks.  One says, ‘trust me’, the other, ‘I’m a politician.’  But he also used to be MD of the multinational Biotech. What do you think would happen if Britain did vote to leave, what would be the reaction here?

CE:         Take my constituency, and one of the biggest employers is Rolls-Royce, I mean, it’s a totally integrated economy, and the reaction would be at first sight, total confusion.  I think the outcome for my constituency will be a disaster.

MM:       Why would it be a disaster for your constituency?

CE:         At the given moment, Rolls-Royces producing half of the engines for AirBus in Germany, shall we put the British out?  But then my constituency is out.

MM:       Would there be any political impetus to treat Britain, frankly, badly, so not to encourage other people to go down a similar route?

CE:         That doesn’t make sense, I mean that is, that is the thinking of the 19th Century, I mean, this discussion is driven to some extent in the UK and to some extent in other European member states by people having the arguments of the 19th of 20th Century.  We are beyond that.  My boys are attending school in England, my former company was heavily affiliated with UK, so it’s no longer that Germany or Europe treats the British in a certain way, I mean, it’s simply an integrated market and to sort that out is complicated.  Obviously, both sides have interest not to create a complete mess, but it would be a mess anyway.

MM:       I’m now in front of the wonderful Reichstag – a 19th Century building with a modern, glass dome, the past fused with the present. Modern Germany’s sense of self is very firmly intertwined with the European Union, which tempers its economic and political eminence of the continent.  The shocks of the migration and the Greek crisis, and the fierce criticism of Mrs Merkel’s conduct in both have meant to heightened awareness of the European project’s fragility.  If there’s another shock, the German political class’s instinct may be to wrap a protective arm around the EU.  Daniela Schwarzer is director of the German Marshall Fund’s Europe Programme.

DANIELA SCHWARZER:      One of the objectives on the German side will very likely be to have a good deal with the UK, but it is not part, obviously of the political decision-making of the European Union, but still a part of the single market.

MM:       There may also be a feeling, of course that we don’t want to encourage other people to do the same thing, particularly with the French elections coming up?

DS:         One motive will be not to make others think that this is an easy game – you have a referendum and then you get what you want, right?  So, there has to be a visible cost attached to the choice of leaving the European Union.

(German speech, ends with ‘Alternative für Deutschland’)

MM:       ‘Take part in the change’ – the slogan of the rising force of the AfD – Germany’s hard right party.  Just three years old, among the victors in the regional elections a couple of months ago.  They are watching our vote very carefully.  The party’s vice chair, MEP Beatrix von Storch says if the UK leaves, Germany will pick up the bill.

BEATRIX VON STORCH:      From the German taxpayers’ point of view, I would like them to stay because, as we all know, UK is the second-biggest net payer for the European Union, so, if they leave, it’s going to be even more burden on the German taxpayers.  On the other hand, I think it will be good if they leave, just to show that they will survive, because this is what now is told, if they leave, no one can leave, without the European Union everything will break down, you can’t trade any longer you can’t travel any longer.  I think it’s completely rubbish and I would like to see how it works.  And I think we will see that it’s possible to trade with (words unclear ‘a new’?) European Union, not being part of it.

MM:       And you don’t think that trade barriers would go up?  That there would be a reaction against it?

BVS:       I think it would be very stupid to punish the trade which serves the people on both sides.

MM:       Might there not be an instinct from the, the people that you’re against, the political elites in the European Union to say, ‘We can’t have this, we can’t have other countries following their lead, like the Front National in France’, and indeed, you’re . . . you’re not asking Germany to leave but they wouldn’t want to . . . anything that would encourage you either, I guess.

BVS:       If they start to punish the UK after they voted to leave, I think this will strengthen all the movements you want to leave the European Union.

MM:       Under the stony eye of a statue of Alexander von Humboldt, students at the University that bears his name in central Berlin, tell me how they see the UK. Nora and Theresa are both law students, who’ve studied in Paris and London as well as here.

NORA:    I personally think Britain is very valuable, I think it’d be a shame if they left.  I they’re also actually valuable by always being critical, because you always, you need criticism to develop something, to develop a project, to see where one needs reforms, what doesn’t work.

THERESA:             We don’t need visas, so we can just go to Britain with our passport.

MM:       Do you think that would change?

T:           I hope not.

MM:       (church bells) Just a Berlin church, but if Britain votes to leave, Europe’s politicians will be asking if the bell tolls for them too.  There will be reflex actions, some within the EU would see it as an opportunity to question its very purpose and direction.  But more would automatically, defensively, talk of building a better, stronger Europe.  Daniela Schwarzer again.

DS:         There has usually been a movement of deepening in a moment of deep crisis.  So take the Eurozone, or take the whole discussion on EU border controls and immigration policy, in a moment where the migration crisis hit.

MM:       Artur Fischer from the Berlin Stock Exchange has deep worries about what a British exit could mean for his country and the whole continent.

AF:         I always had a feeling that being nationalistic is not a good thing.  So, if the EU would be damaged and the value of the EU is already fragile, and if Great Britain is out, the temptation is that the German population will also consider what are the benefits, why don’t we do things on our own.  It gives you a very eerie feeling – how thin that layer of civilisation is. Look at it. We’re only a few years away from this, and we all call ourselves civilised and, like, you know, it’s not going to happen anymore.  We just have to make sure that people realise how small that step is and that we do everything possible not to cross that line.  And . . . to do that together with other countries in the EU gives us a chance . . . to come to a compromise, if we have differences of opinion.  If we are not in the EU we will not look for compromise, we will look for a winning.

MM:       Artur Fischer in Berlin. There are, of course, big German companies based here. One of the biggest, Siemens UK. I asked their CEO, Juergen Maier, what sort of deal he thought the UK could get outside the EU.

JUERGEN MAIER: Over a period of time there will be trade agreements that Britain can do with the EU, and of course with other nations. But the much more important thing here is the non-tariff barriers, which, over many, many decades we have taken down, we have created a level playing field across the EU, that’s what the single market is all about, and we would be outside of that signal market and we would, over a period of time, not from today to tomorrow, but over a period of time, we would see those nontariff barriers rising, and that would be a disadvantage to especially British manufacturing companies, who are exporting into those EU markets.

MM:       But why would they rise, because those on the Leave side have said time and time again that it’s in nobody’s interests, neither the remainder of the European Union, nor the United Kingdom, to have those sort of barriers raised.  It is of course true that, you know, Germany will want to continue to trade with Great Britain, as we will want to continue to trade with them.  But we will have just said, ‘Actually, we’ve left your club’, and in the real world what happens is that the people who are then left sat round the table – remember, we’re not around that table – they will be writing new standards, they will be done in a way that certainly does not advantage, and probably could disadvantage Great Britain.

MM:       Do you think there will be a difference in Germany between business interests if Britain leaves and political interest?

JM:         If we were in a situation outside of the European Union then, you know, companies like ours, but, you know, the many German companies we have that invest in Great Britain would find it more difficult to create new investments here, or, let’s put it another way they would just find it easier to do that for countries within the European Union.  And the interesting thing about it is that actually, currently, with us being in the European Union, we, in Siemens – and I know that from many other companies as well – we see the UK as a fantastic place to invest in new R&D.  You know, we think the environment here, the business climate, the investments that are going on are absolutely tremendous, so why make it more difficult for ourselves?

MM:       I suppose what I’m asking is if the German government and other governments in the European Union said, ‘Look, we’ve got to make it difficult for Britain, for political reasons, for the rest of the European Union’ – would businesses say, ‘No, come on, hang on, we can’t have that’?

JM:         No, I mean, there, there will no doubt be, you know, some of that, but what I think would happen is, is that, you know, the European Union would, would, you know, obviously accept the decision of the British people at the end of the day, and the European Union will do whatever it can to make sure it continues to prosper, invest and grow its activities in the European Union.  And yes, Great Britain would not always be right on the inside of the . . . of the negotiations, and, and that club. Would they completely alienate us and not want to work with us at all?  No, I mean that’s just . . . that’s just crazy thinking.

MM:       Do you have emergency plans, or plans for what you do if there was a vote to Brexit?

JM:         We haven’t, no, we’ve clearly er, you know, thought about some of the immediate risks and some of the things we might need to do, but the fact is, is that should there be a Brexit, there is this two-year period that we all know about.  My own view is, is that would probably end up needing to be extended, because it would take longer to negotiate trade agreements, so, you know, we would have that time in order to consider what we need to do around, you know, things like exports regulations and paperwork and red tape and, you know, all of these things that we’d actually have more of and not less of, you know, so we’d have plenty of time to work that out.

MM:       Juergen Maier. The Labour MP, Gisela Stuart, who was born in Germany and came here in 1974, and Sir Vince Cable are still with me.  Gisela Stuart, we got a sense there from Berlin that, you know, there wouldn’t be any desire to harshly punish Britain, but we just simply couldn’t expect the sort of trade deals that we have now?

GS:         Well, but it also ignores the, the real big game-changer in this whole conversation, which was the introduction of the euro.  We’ve had a European economy which, in the last decade, you know, hasn’t managed to grow in comparison to other economies.  You know, the US grew 6% faster.  So you’ve got a, a, a trading bloc that is actually not growing as fast as it could, you have got a single currency that requires much deeper integration, for Germany to succeed, we are not part of the single currency, and by that decision we would be much more successful if we were outside.  And Germany, for example has just introduced a minimum wage, which is lower than our minimum wage, so, if you’ve got high unemployment on mainland Europe, and you have got jobs and a minimum wage here, you will increase the pressure on the United Kingdom and the public services and all the things that we talked about before, which is why I say, you know, vote Leave on the 23 June.

MM:       Sir Vince, it’s a failing bloc and we’re better off outside it?

VC:         Well, some of the countries in the European Union have had . . . done very badly, of course Greece most extremely, Italy and others.  Germany, of course, consistently has outperformed the UK, has got much higher levels of productivity.  Spain is growing quite rapidly, it’s recovered, in many ways, from the crisis, so it’s a very, very mixed picture.  But I think your comments er, the, the conversation you had in Germany was actually very, very balanced and very good.  The only real, heavy endorsement of the Brexit position came from that ex— that, er, the MEP from the extreme right wing German party, which is not an endorsement I would want.  I thought Juergen Maier’s comments at the end captured it just about right, but you’ll have two or three years of uncertainty, probably upheaval is overstating it, but very, very serious uncertainty in the UK about where we go next as renegotiate new arrangements, and then you have a gradual loss of business and . . . undermining our living standards because of the difficulties of continuing to operate in the single market, which is producing common standards, particularly in manufacturing, which we’re no longer part of, I think that was a very good summary of the problem.

MM:       Gisela, you know there’s very deep worry among Germans about the future of the European Union if we left.  Would it be the beginning of the end?  And would that be a good thing?

GS:         I think the beginning of a managed process which would allow the Eurozone countries to achieve that deeper political integration which they need in order for their single currency to succeed, and for those countries who are outside to disentangle and establish different relationships.  And, you know, even in countries within the Eurozone which have got high growth, Spain still has 45% unemployment of the under 25’s.  This is a currency bloc which is in deep economic problems, they need to do something which is right for them, which is simply not appropriate for us, and the sooner we realise that a managed separation would be beneficial for both sides, the better.

MM:       Sir Vince, we’ve only got a minute left, but would it be the beginning of the end?

VC:         It would certainly be very difficult if we left, I’m not into kind of Armageddon-type arguments, but you know, Gisela’s argument that we have to separate ourselves, we are separated by the fact that we’re not part of the monetary union, that’s a decision we’ve made, and we’ve gone our separate ways, but you don’t need to compound the differences with the European Union by also leaving the single market.  The single market, which Britain sought and has profited from is absolutely fundamental, particularly to our manufacturing industry and our traded sector of our economy, it’s completely unnecessary to walk away from that, with all the uncertainty and all the damage that that will create.

MM:       Sir Vince Cable, and Gisela Stuart, thank you very much indeed.

 

Photo by Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Referendum Blog: May 9

Referendum Blog: May 9

WAR MONGERING?: Nick Robinson – for once – did a credible job this morning (9/5) in trying to pin down  foreign secretary Philip Hammond over David Cameron’s dire warning that exiting the EU could endanger peace and security in Europe, with the continent at the mercy of ‘forces of nationalism’ – a claim that led in the Daily Mail (for example) that he was saying that Brexit could lead to war.  Robinson’s first question, (or rather statement, because the interview was recorded) was:

[David Cameron] will go on to make an argument about the risk to the continent if we choose to leave. Well, a few minutes ago, I did speak to the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond and I asked him if leaving the EU really could lead to war on the continent, perhaps he should begin by apologising to the public for holding a referendum with such enormous consequences.

Hammond immediately squirmied, and indeed, spent the next ten minutes in the prime 8.10am Today slot effectively side-stepping the point, as the transcript below shows. Robinson kept the interview on relatively narrow tram lines and it gradually emerged that Hammond was prepared only to say that the EU had a peace-keeping role; in his view, it was the newspapers that had, in effect, exaggerated the Prime Minister’s message by bringing the possibility of war into the equation.  Robinson rightly noted that it was the Prime Minister’s invocation of Churchill and Wellington that had been the trigger for that.

The full extent of Hammond’s obfuscation and slipperiness was revealed in this exchange:

NR: Well, I put to you again then the question that I opened with, which is: if it’s so serious, why on earth put this at risk by having an unnecessary referendum, and why did you, not much longer than a year ago, I think, say you were ready to vote to leave the EU in certain circumstances? PH: If there’d been no change, if there was no change of direction of the European Union (words unclear due to speaking over) NR: (speaking over) Sure, but as our Foreign Secretary, and as previous Defence Secretary, you were (fragment of word, unclear) willing to take the risk over peace and war, and you’ve changed your mind over a few welfare benefit changes? PH: Why are we having a referendum? Because this is a democracy, and because the European Union has changed significantly since we last voted on this issue in 1975, and it is right in a democracy, and clearly the will of the British people as we’re seeing from this robust debate today, that they should have a chance to express a view on this issue and it’s simply not acceptable in a democracy for the elite to say, ‘This is a question too important to put to the people.’ It’s not . . .

That said, Robinson’s approach to the ‘balancing’ interview towards the end of the programme (8.50am)  with government minister Penny Mordaunt was wholly different.  First, the exchange was much shorter than that with Hammond, and in consequence, she was not able to develop any effective rebuttals. Then Robinson described her during the exchange as a ‘relatively junior minister’ (thereby surely undermining her authority), and finally asked her to take part in a game of naming world leaders who agreed with the UK leaving the EU. Mordaunt attempted to say that there was a long list of senior military and intelligence figures who supported ‘leave’, and that leaders were concurring with David Cameron for the sake of diplomacy.   But before she could respond fully, or with any coherence to the substantive point, he wound the interview up.     Earlier Robinson asked if she accepted David Cameron’s argument that ‘at a dangerous and unstable time’ Brexit was bound to weaken the glue that held the nations of Europe together; whether the UK leaving would lead to other countries leaving too, and whether that was important; and finally, whether the UK leaving would make it easier to deal with tensions created by the Eurozone crisis and ‘migration’, Mordaunt managed to say in response that the EU was not delivering on security and prosperity because it did not allow nation states to thrive, and was causing fragmentation; that exit would allow the UK to control its own borders;  and that exit would be a catalyst for beneficial reform of the rest of the EU. But Robinson interrupted her frequently, and at no stage was she allowed to formulate detailed responses which answered the points raised by Robinson fully. By contrast, Hammond had plenty of space to put his arguments about the importance of the EU in keeping the peace. Overall, therefore, the two exchanges were not at all balanced. Most weight was put on the Cameron warning.  BBC editors thought the Cameron intervention was so important that they were already trailing it in the BBC1 bulletins on Sunday evening. Security correspondent Frank Gardiner was wheeled out to reinforce the gravity. In his estimation, ‘the most authoritative voices’ in the security establishment were also warning that leaving the EU would compromise the UK’s safety.

 

Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 9th May 2016, Interview with Philip Hammond, 8.10am

NICK ROBINSON:             The Prime Minister is speaking just about now about that issue of Europe.  Now, you’ve heard many risks spelt out by both campaigns in this EU referendum, mortgages, for example, going up versus the suggestion that immigration will go up.  But the Prime Minister is going much, much further than that, arguing that there is really a risk to peace and security on the continent of Britain chooses to lose (sic, means ‘leave’?) it’s produced headlines claiming that Brexit could lead to war.  In a few minutes, I’ll be asking the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond, to explain just how that might be the case, but the Prime Minister, meanwhile, is just on his feet, let’s go live now, just to hear a little of what he’s got to say.

DAVID CAMERON . . . help decide the rules, the advantages of this far outweigh any disadvantages.  Our membership of the single market is one of the reasons why our economy is doing so well, why we’ve created almost 2.4 million jobs over the last six years, and why so many companies from overseas, from China, India, the United States and Australia and other Commonwealth countries invest so much here in the UK.  It’s one of the factors, together with our superb workforce, low taxes set by the British government, and our climate of enterprise which makes Britain such an excellent place to do business . . .

NR:        Well, there’s the Prime Minister making the more conventional argument, but he will go on to make an argument about the risk to the continent if we choose to leave.  Well, a few minutes ago, I did speak to the Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond and I asked him if leaving the EU really could lead to war on the continent, perhaps he should begin by apologising to the public for holding a referendum with such enormous consequences.

PHILIP HAMMOND:        The point that the Prime Minister is going to be making in the speech that he is giving this morning is that Britain is a European power, it has a vital interest in peace and stability on this continent and historically, whenever we’ve turned our back on Europe, whenever we’ve retreated into isolation, we’ve ended up regretting it and having to reinsert ourselves into the European equation because it’s essential for us to be there to protect our own interests, (fragments of words, unclear due to speaking over)

NR:        (speaking over) But he’s doing more than that, isn’t he?  He’s going further and saying that if we leave the glue that holds together European nations may be dissolved and that may end in conflict or war?

PH:        Well, what he’s doing is pointing out that although we in Britain have enjoyed peace and stability for many, many years, not all parts of the European continent have been that fortunate, not all parts have the deep and long democratic traditions that we have, not all parts are as stable as we are.  And he’s pointing out as well that the European Union is one of the institutions that ensures peace, stability and security in our continent, and he argues . . .

NR:        (speaking over) Can we spell it out though, is he arguing that, and are you arguing that not that there is an necessity of this, of course not, but there is a chance that is leaving the EU produces the conditions for conflict, a conflict that we in Britain are forced to intervene in?

PH:        Er, the point the Prime Minister is making is that the European Union, a strong European Union is an important contributor to peace and security in our continent, and if we . . .

NR:        (speaking over) It seems to me you’re reluctant to say it, forgive me, you’re willing the headlines that say they might be war . . .

PH:        (speaking over) Look, I didn’t, I didn’t write the headlines . . .

NR:        (speaking over) Er, you’re quoting Churchill, you’re quoting Wellington, you’re quoting the Duke of Marlborough in aid, and yet when I say, ‘Well, might it lead to war?’ you’re, ‘Oh, no, no, we’re not quite saying that.’

PH:        Well, I don’t write the headlines in some of our newspapers, what I’m saying is that the European Union is an important contributor to the stability and peace that we enjoy in Europe and that is in Britain’s interests, and history tells us that Britain is a European power, it’s a global power as well, but it’s a European power and it cannot turn its back on what’s going on in Europe, we have to be concerned about what’s going on in Europe.

NR:        Well, I put to you again then the question that I opened with, which is: if it’s so serious, why on earth put this at risk by having an unnecessary referendum, and why did you, not much longer than a year ago, I think, say you were ready to vote to leave the EU in certain circumstances?

PH:        If there’d been no change, if there was no change of direction of the European Union (words unclear due to speaking over)

NR:        (speaking over) Sure, but as our Foreign Secretary, and as previous Defence Secretary, you were (fragment of word, unclear) willing to take the risk over peace and war, and you’ve changed your mind over a few welfare benefit changes?

PH:        Why are we having a referendum?  Because this is a democracy, and because the European Union has changed significantly since we last voted on this issue in 1975, and it is right in a democracy, and clearly the will of the British people as we’re seeing from this robust debate today, that they should have a chance to express a view on this issue and it’s simply not acceptable in a democracy for the elite to say, ‘This is a question too important to put to the people.’ It’s not . . .

NR:        (speaking over) It’s hard to imagine Churchill saying, you know, ‘I think this could cause conflict in Europe, but never mind, let’s consider doing it.’

PH:        It’s a question that we should put to the British people.  We should have a robust debate about it, nobody on this side of the argument is suggesting that all the, all the arguments go one way, there’s a balance to be made, we believe that the balance of these arguments looking at Britain’s prosperity, future jobs, future economic growth, Britain’s security and safety and Britain’s influence in the world, clearly come down on the side of remaining in the European Union, that will make . . .

NR:        (speaking over, words unclear) your experience . . .

PH:        . . . stronger, safer and more prosperous.

NR:        Forgive me, but has your experience as, first Defence Secretary, then Foreign Secretary changed your mind?  You were a leading Eurosceptic, are there things that you’ve seen, conversations you’ve had, documents that’s crossed your desk, that have now made you think that the risk of Britain leaving is far, far higher – or is your side of the argument just to be a panic that it might lose?

PH:        It has, being Foreign Secretary has certainly changed my perspective.  I’ve visited 71 countries as Foreign Secretary and with my hand on my heart I can tell you that not in any one of those countries have the people I’ve been meeting told me that Britain would be a more influential power, Britain would be a more important partner to them if we were outside the European Union.  Quite contrary.  All of them have told me that they regard Britain as an important power in its own right, but they regard Britain’s influence and Britain’s importance is magnified by the fact that it is one of the leading powers in the European Union.

NR:        Let’s go to the kernel of this argument then about peace and security, you know, your former, your predecessor as Defence Secretary, Liam Fox would make this case, no doubt Boris Johnson will later, that it’s NATO that keeps the peace on the European continent, it is the binding of the United States in with the European countries that keeps is secure, not the EU?

PH:        Of course NATO is crucially important and will remain a member of NATO whatever happens, but NATO is essentially an outward-looking, war-fighting machine, and very, very important to us.  What the European Union does is operate to bind the nation states of the European Union together, through mechanisms for peace and security which work between those European Union states, and what the Prime Minister is saying . . .

NR:        (speaking over) But surely, surely Mr Hammond, surely Mr Hammond, you may have been able to make that argument in the first 20, 30 even 40 years of the EU, but far from binding the countries of Europe together at the moment, the crisis over the Eurozone, with people losing their jobs because of interest rates set to benefit Germany, the crisis over mass migration which is not being controlled and people are erecting fences across borders again, the EU is contributing to the sources of conflict, not ending them.

PH:        No, it’s that, but that’s a . . . er, if I may so, that’s a misanalysis.  The challenge of dealing with large scale migration flows in the continent of Europe, and we’re not in the Schengen area, so we’re not directly affected as other countries are, but that challenge would be there anyway, and the European Union gives as a mechanism for addressing that challenge.  Now, it’s not a perfect mechanism, and of course, tensions have risen as a result of the huge migratory flows that we saw last summer, but the European Union gives as a mechanism for containing and managing those threats, and we can’t, as the British people, just because we live on an island, turn our backs on those issues and say there nothing to do with us, they . . .

NR:        (speaking over) Let’s spell it out then.

PH:        They do affect us.

NR:        Yeah.

PH:        They do present us with risk, and we have to be engaged in resolving that problem.

NR:        (speaking over) I want you to spell out that risk. I, I accept, you know, you don’t want write headlines about war, let’s you spell out the risk then, if we leave, what then follows that could lead to conflict?

PH:        The European Union will be weaker without Britain inside it, and the mechanisms that maintain the peace and stability of the continent will be commensurately weaker, Britain . . .

NR:        (speaking over) But are you saying the democracies, because usually, we assume, democracies don’t go to war with one another, are you saying that if Britain leaves the . . . there would be a situation, suddenly, over a period of years perhaps, in which one country in the EU might go into conflict with another country in the EU despite the fact these are free, democratic countries.

PH:        What we, what we run the risk of is tensions rising in parts of Europe that perhaps do not have the deep and enduring democratic routes that we and our immediate neighbours have, and in the areas just outside the European Union, the Balkans for example, countries that are closely associated with the European Union that are applicant states, (fragment of word, unclear) would-be member states of the European Union, where the European Union has significant influence and significant ability to influence events, anything that weakens the European Union would weaken the forces of stability in those areas, that would be bad for Britain, bad for Britain’s security . . .

NR:        (speaking over) Sure, you made that point.

PH:        . . . and for Britain’s, er, role in the world.

NR:        A final thought for you: it is really quite extraordinary, isn’t it that a national leader who says that leaving the EU would be so fundamentally against our national interest, has chosen to put all this at risk simply to deal with the rise of UKIP and a rebellion in his own party?

PH:        We live in a democracy, er, Nick.  When we go into a general election, as a Tory I will be telling my voters that it is in the national interest to elect a Conservative government, that what the opposition parties proposing the government would be bad for Britain, but it is for the voters to decide.  And in this argument we are making the case for Britain being stronger, safer and better off inside the European Union . . .

NR:        (speaking over) Foreign Secretary . . .

PH:        . . . but it’s the British people that will listen to the arguments, weigh them up and decide on balance where Britain’s best interests lies.

NR:        They will, and they’ll also listen to a junior defence minister who is coming on the programme later, who disagrees with that.  Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary, thank you very much.

PH:        Thank you.  

Transcript of BBC Radio 4, ‘Today’, 9th May 2016, Interview with Penny Mordaunt, 8.50am

NICK ROBINSON:             Now, in the last few minutes the Prime Minister has used a speech to argue that a vote to leave the EU would endanger peace and security in Europe, and arguing that history shows Britain can’t stand aside from conflict on the continent.  Challenging the Prime Minister’s arguments is a woman he appointed to be a defence minister, Penny Mordaunt, she’s part of the Vote Leave campaign, and she joins us from our Westminster studio, morning to you.

PENNY MORDAUNT:      Good morning.

NR:        Do you accept the core of the Prime Minister’s argument that at a dangerous time, and unstable time, Brexit is bound to weaken the glue that holds the nations of Europe together?

PM:       No, I do not.  The Leave campaign want to drag the Prime Minister back to the issues that matter today, our borders, the security risks that come from accessing countries and to our operational security and what we need to keep our country safe today, the Prime Minister . . .

NR:        (speaking over) Sure, but let me drag you back to his argument, though . . .

PM:       (speaking over) Yes, the Prime Minister today is, is trying to tap into a . . . a vision, which I think we all share, of nations living in peace, looking West, er, secure and prosperous.  What is being debated though is that the EU is a) necessary to that, and I would actually argue that its current trajectory is absolutely counter to that.  At the same time, he’s telling us that we are heading for war if we leave, the EU is denying us the tools we need to protect our own citizens, and at the same time . . .

NR:        (speaking over) Look, there’s evidence, there’s evidence against you in this sense, isn’t there, which is in a poll Ipsos MORI have done right across the EU, what would be the response of the peoples of Europe to Brexit, they would demand their referendum, and more people would demand to get out the EU.  Now, what would be interesting to know is do you welcome that, do you think yes, let’s get, let’s get other countries at the EU, or do you hope they’ll all stay together and will just walk away?

PM:       Well, I think it, it, it’s worth asking why those countries are, are saying that, it is because . . .

NR:        (interrupting) But forgive me, I’m asking you whether it’ll happen, not why.

PM:       No, well, I think we ought to be looking at why.  Look the, the reason why the EU is not delivering, either on security or economic prosperity is it . . . because it is not doing what its nation states need in order to thrive. Erm, it is causing tremendous fragmentation, the rise of far right politics all the things that the Prime Minister are warning us could happen if we leave, are here now today.

NR:        And you (fragment of word, unclear) arguing that it would make things better, those, all those tensions created, nobody denies it, by the Eurozone crisis, all the tensions created by the migration crisis – you are arguing that if one of the principle democracies in the world, one of the biggest military powers, one of the greatest economic power (sic) votes to leave, that will somehow reduce those tensions?

PM:       I think it will, because of very, very (word unclear due to speaking over ‘confident’?) reasons . . .

NR:        (speaking over) How?

PM:       Firstly, we will be able to get back control of our own borders, that is absolutely fundamental to our own security . . .

NR:        (speaking over) No, that’s good for Britain, and you’ve made that argument day after day.

PM:       (speaking over) Yes, but . . .

NR:        What happens in Europe is what I’m asking you.

PM:       (speaking over) But also, as well as it being a better deal for the UK, it will give the remaining EU states a catalyst for reform.  You could see, to the tail end of the Prime Minister’s negotiations, other nations saying, ‘do you know, actually that sounds very sensible, we ought to have some of that to,’ we have tried . . .

NR:        (speaking over) So your message to Europe is, is, is . . .

PM:       (speaking over) We have tried . . .

NR:        . . . we’re walking out the club just to help you.

PM:       No, we have tried absolutely everything to get the EU to reform from within, this is our last chance I think to get it to start to get back to its democratic principles, to actually start doing what its nation states need, both in terms of security and economic prosperity, unless we have . . .

NR:        (speaking over) Can I ask you one last question if I may . . .

PM:       Certainly.

NR:        Well, with respect and you are a relatively, you know, junior minister, fairly new to this, can you name a single world leader who agrees with you on this, and let’s leave Donald Trump out shall we?

PM:       (laughs) Look, no head of state or Prime Minister or President is going to want to annoy our Prime Minister . . .

NR:        (interrupting) What, they’re all saying what they don’t believe . . .

PM:       (speaking over) there are a . . . no . . . there is . . .

NR:        . . . because they’re being diplomatic.

PM:       There is a big, long list of admirals, generals, er, the former head of the CIA, former head of MI6 who think that we will be safer if we leave the EU, rather . . .

NR:        (speaking over) Just not every other world leader.

PM:       No, but rather than trade job titles, the public want the arguments, that’s what . . .

NR:        Okay.

PM:       . . . we need to give them, why we’ll be safer, we need control over our borders, we need the EU to stop undermining our security relationships with the Five Eyes . . .

NR:        (speaking over) We’ve got to leave it there, I’m afraid. Penny Mordaunt . . .

PM:       . . . that’s why we’ll be safer out.

NR:        Thank you for your time.

Photo by DFID – UK Department for International Development

Referendum Blog: April 20

Referendum Blog: April 20

OSBORNE BIAS?  News-watch has already noted that the marathon BBC coverage of George Osborne’s remain ‘Exocet‘ on Monday led the senior political reporting team  to make claims that the ‘leave’ side did not have satisfactory documents to produce in response, and also that the weight of establishment opinion was strongly against exit. Political editor Laura Kuenssberg and her deputy Norman Smith thus entered the controversial domain of offering strong opinions about key matters relating to the EU referendum. No doubt BBC more senior news executives would defend their comments on the ground that such correspondents are entitled to exercise, and indeed are paid to do so, their professional opinions in the area of their specific expertise. However, that raises further important issues.  If the claims of one side of the referendum debate are to be subjected to such examination, is the same happening with the other? Relevant is that it was reported as part of the Osborne ‘Exocet’ that the Conservative high command is still insisting that they can talk with confidence about how Britain will perform in a ‘reformed EU’, and predict the economic future on that basis.  But are the EU ‘reforms’ secured by David Cameron actually binding? The BBC has said from the beginning that they are, but there are numerous claims that they are not, most recently from the Vice-President of the European Parliament. It seems that there is a tougher level of scrutiny from Kuenssberg for the ‘out’ camp and another for ‘remain’.  Another point here is that the ‘in’ side are being judged to be the more credible – there has been no obvious effort to look at what is likely to happen to the EU, if, after UK exit, there is a scramble by other countries also to leave.

LABOUR ‘HANDS OFF THE BBC’:  What is it about so-called social ‘progressives’ that they think that any change in the BBC – as the debate continues about Charter renewal – is going to result in a slide into deteriorating standards and even collapse? Angela Eagle, the Labour party’s shadow secretary for culture, has made a keynote speech in which she has laid out in detail for the first time the Corbyn regime’s thinking about media policy. Her principal message to the government, despite the huge changes and challenges facing media companies is ‘lay off the BBC – any intervention is bullying’.  Her core points were:

  • Culture secretary John Whittingdale should not interfere at all in the BBC, especially over the EU referendum coverage or in matters of how programme budgets should be spent
  • no changes in the licence fee
  • no changes to the BBC’s commercial operations, including the possible sale of its stake in UKTV
  • No ‘top slicing’ of the BBC licence so that other broadcasters could benefit from a ‘public service fund’.
  • The BBC should remain at the heart of a complex state media patronage system in which it hands out cash to ‘independent’ producers
  • Only minor changes in BBC regulation, and strong doubt about the ability of Ofcom to become future regulator (as was proposed by the Clementi report). Further, he government should not be involved in any way in the appointment process of a future regulatory body or management board.

This was a facile, lazy speech which suggests that Labour’s only concern is to maintain the BBC’s dominance and the media status quo, along with the continuation of its funding by the licence fee, despite it being least affordable by the poor. The suspicion must be that Eagle and her colleagues do not want change because they know that editorially, the Corporation favours Labour values, and has been for years favouring its agenda – pro-EU, human rights (with all that loaded phrase entail in left-wing politics), multiculturalism, climate alarmism…and so on. Eagle’s only real reservation about the BBC’s current state of health is that it is not diverse enough. And she reserved her loudest cheer for Channel 4 (which she also says must not change) for its ‘360 degree diversity charter’ – a document that could serve as The Bible of the diversity industry.

Photo by Chingster23

Conservative BBC reform?  Don’t hold your breath

Conservative BBC reform? Don’t hold your breath

The BBC made it abundantly clear who they wanted to win this election. The interview by Mishal Husain of Nigel Farage which was highlighted here, is a typical manifestation of their subtle-as-a-brick approach.

To protect the licence fee and their imperialist, state-protected dominance of the UK’s media, they desperately wanted in power an alliance of Labour, SNP and the Greens.

So from inside their blinkered metropolitan bubble, they worked consistently to ridicule anything they saw as opposition. Then there was bias by omission, an avoidance of discussion as much as possible of issues such as the EU and immigration control.

Another strand was that no opportunity was missed to play up Nicola Sturgeon’s brilliance.

In the same vein, almost every utterance by Ed Miliband was treated with fawning reverence. It’s no wonder he had his Moses tablet moment. The BBC was already treating his policies as the Holy Writ.

Throughout the campaign were interviews and features in these deep grooves. Amongst the most obvious examples was this, spotted by expert BBC-watcher Craig Byers on Radio 4’s the World Tonight on the eve of the election. The BBC’s version of ‘fairness’ was three strident anti-austerity voices against only one very moderate local businessman. He was actually one of the few people in the country who favoured a continuation of the Coalition.

Another example was the approach of Mark Mardell. His biting anti-Ukip tone was especially pronounced in a stream of negative invective in his commentary in this interview sequence during the 2009 European election. His main thrust was that Ukip are the British National Party in blazers. Mardell’s interview on the World This Weekend of Mark Reckless five days before the 2015 poll was every bit as negative. It was as if nothing had changed – to him, four million Ukip voters are definitely wrong.

Ex-Europe editor Mardell’s interview on the World This Weekend five days before the 2015 poll was every bit as negative. It was as if nothing had changed – to him, four million Ukip voters are definitely wrong.

As part of their election campaign, on top of this blatant bias in interviews, the Corporation used their vast resources to commission rafts of programming that crudely rubbished opponents: drama that was so left-wing that it was risible, so-called comedy that savaged anti-austerity, and endless programmes that in different ways promoted multiculturalism and green agendas.

But despite all their efforts, a result that Tony Hall and his lefty-packed Management Board dreaded has now come to pass. Middle England, thank God, despite BBC’s relentless torrent of propaganda, have different concerns.

Back in 1997, observers noted that after the Blair landslide, the corridors of Broadcasting House were strewn with empty champagne bottles. It marked 20 years of continuing gravy-train financing.

Prospects are not so rosy now, and Lord Hall and his board will no doubt be locked his week in WIA-style meetings to recalibrate their survival campaign.

The news that John Whittingdale – twice shadow culture secretary and chair of the Commons Media Committee for a decade – has become Culture secretary looks on the surface an appointment that could lead to significant change and even some kind of assault on BBC bias.

He is decent man who is on record as saying forcefully that he cannot see the licence fee lasting for more than 10 more years. He has also said he wants BBC governance altered so that the current lapdog trustees are replaced by a body that has genuine independence and will hold the Corporation properly to account.

On top of that, change cannot be stalled: Charter renewal has to be agreed in time to come into effect at the beginning of 2017.   Suddenly Lord Hall might be ruing the appointment of former Labour minister James Purnell as his policy advisor.

But it might not yet be time to anticipate definite improvements.

Elsewhere there are abundant signs that life rafts won’t actually be necessary for the BBC or any of the liberal-left concerns that Cameron has championed rather than attacked. The administration now assuming office is not rooted any more in genuine principles of conservatism, free speech or social liberalism. This article on Spiked by deputy Tim Black, sums up the current position neatly:

“In fact, the Conservative Party under David Cameron’s near-decade-long tenure has been in the process of being emptied of any distinctive political content. Traditional commitments have been thrown over, like so much unnecessary ballast. The Union, the family, let alone economic liberalism, barely register as Conservative touchstones anymore….

“… the Tory Party’s raison d’être is to define itself against itself, to affirm its modern identity by negating and trashing what it was. This process of ‘detoxification’, of so-called modernisation, this party-political cleansing, this determination to jettison the political past, has been the defining cause of the modern Conservative Party.”

The most immediate and compelling evidence of this is the appointment of Amber Rudd as climate secretary. She is a total climate alarmist – so much so that the Guardian has welcomed her appointment.

It boils down to that in many respects, the Conservatives are now part of the same metropolitan bubble as Labour, the SNP the Greens and the Liberal Democrats. Janet Daley of the Telegraph describes it adroitly here. The BBC remains the ringmaster of their interpretation of public opinion. To them all, the rest of the UK is a different country. 4m Ukip votes? They don’t give a stuff about any of them.

 

 

 

Photo by David Holt London

Newsnight immigration feature casts worried Brits as xenophobes

Newsnight immigration feature casts worried Brits as xenophobes

The BBC’s blizzard of election-related stories that spin immigration as a topic that doesn’t matter is impossible to track. Lift almost any stone and there’s another example.

A Newsnight feature last Wednesday was billed by presenter Emily Maitlis as ‘a long hard look at the subject’.

This, it transpired, was a special piece of BBCspeak. It meant that Newsnight – led, of course, by former Guardian executive Ian Katz- was about to deploy its own form of spin to show in yet another way that those British plebs who support tougher immigration controls are deluded bigots and xenophobes.

The main section of the item was actually a very unequal discussion which Emily Maitlis pushed very hard to ensure was skewed to the pro-immigration side.  Self-styled shock jock John Gaunt, the main contributor who supported more controls on immigration, explains the way he was ambushed and appallingly treated in Podcast episode 24 here.

On display was the same Newsnight approach to balance as was deployed on the day that David Cameron announced his alleged desire to hold an in-out EU referendum. On that evening 18 pro-EU campaigners were pitched against Nigel Farage.

The main analysis in this blog is of the opening report by Duncan Weldon, hired by Katz as an economics pundit from the TUC. It was actually only 670 words, or five minutes of airtime, but it was so blatantly skewed that it stands almost alone as monumental evidence of the deep bias in this arena.

Former Labour acolyte Weldon’s initial point was that immigration in London didn’t matter because ‘it was a fact’ of life; he contended that the changing demographics, ‘were not a political issue’. Says who?

Maybe these things don’t matter to those at the BBC, who worship daily at the shrine of multiculturalism. But to put it mildly, respected think-tank Migration Watch certainly do not agree that an influx of 1.5m foreign nationals over the past decade – the biggest in the capital’s history by a very long way – can be regarded as ‘only a fact of life or is ‘not a political issue’. MW presents compelling evidence that it has created a massive housing crisis and has driven tens of thousands of native-born Londoners away.

After this glaring bias, Weldon next contended that in order to see ‘where things had changed’ as a result of immigration, you needed to go on commuter lines out of the capital, to places such as ‘Peterborough, Stevenage, Welwyn and Hatfield’. Bizarre, perhaps, that he referred only to a few towns on the London to Doncaster East Coast railway line, but most BBC staff inhabit only a narrow metropolitan bubble, so perhaps he is not aware that immigration issues are also hitting communities further afield as well. Places such as Rotherham, say. Or Oxford.

Next, Weldon turned to that old BBC device, the vox pop, a range of voices from members of the public. Many years ago, when I did my basic training as a BBC reporter in what is now the Langham Hotel, I was warned that these can never be – and should never be projected as – a balanced or objective view of public opinion. They are only ever a subjective snapshot.

Weldon apparently now works according to very different rules.

The sequence of three voices was gathered, selected and edited by him with all the subtlety of a jackhammer to show that those with views against immigration are bigoted xenophobes for no other reason that they hate foreign languages and shops selling foreign goods. On the other hand, his pro-immigration contributor made a reasoned response, making the point that immigrants are ‘different brains from different parts of the world’, who set up new businesses and had a wide range of skills.

Weldon then said that if this selection of ‘public opinion’ (which this most certainly was not) was ‘nuanced’, but the view of business was ‘fairly’ clear’. His source here was Katja Hall, the deputy director general of the CBI, who a search on Google reveals is the leading mouthpiece for a totally uncontrolled flow of foreign labour into the country. And blow me down with a feather – she is also a former BBC employee who was responsible for ‘change management’. What better credentials could a supporter of uncontrolled immigration (and, of course, according to her CV, ‘gender equality’) have? And what better an objective source for a Newsnight quote?

Finally, Weldon delivered his own verdict on the immigration debate and evidence. This was , supposedly ‘neutral’ but was actually more of the same; it was a treatise that could have been written by any member of the TUC, the Labour Party or, for that matter, the SNP.

There is only one explanation: a common mindset and a common set of rules are at work. This one-sided approach emanates directly from the Bridcut report, a Gormenghast-style recalibration of the rules of reporting that was deliberately engineered by the Trustees to allow the BBC’s own agendas to be followed on topics such as immigration and climate alarmism.

The same applies to stories about the EU. During the election campaign, when a has-been political leader whines that Brexit would be damaging, it’s automatically elevated to headline status.

Conversely, when the leader of the only party advocating withdrawal is interviewed, his views about the same subject are not even on the agenda. Instead, Evan Davis works hard to pin a new label on him as a ‘hater’ of that nice Paddington Bear’s version of multiculturalism.

You could not make it up.