Aunty gets preachy after the Referendum

I took too long to find this. It sprang to prominence again after the case where Trump called out the BBC in a clear case of dubious editing of one of his speeches (although the BBC denied partisan intent).

I heard of individual items now and then on BBC bias but I finally tracked the whole thing. It is the excellent News Watch, a site that has been monitoring the BBC for years and applying various kinds of analyses of bias to its outputs.

Some measures of bias are pretty simple -- counting the number of time spent on reporting items, or time allocated to speakers defending particular positions (see below).

It also touches on classic themes, reminiscent of famous work in the past, like the Glasgow University Media Group (still going, and with a list of the classic stuff here) which analysed less obvious signs of preference --where spokespersons were interviewed, for example (in the studio when their opinions belonged to a cosy consensus or, literally, as outsiders in the street).

News Watch has had a number of tussles with the BBC over the years, trying to get them to take its work seriously. The BBC will not accept any 'quantitative' or 'academic' analysis of patterns, but focuses only on individual programmes and claims its staff depend on their indefinable professional judgement to decide matters like 'balance' (although the Government imposes simple constraints during elections or referenda, for example, on the number of minutes that can be devoted to spokespersons from each 'side').

News Watch says: 

Mr Hutt [ the Director of the BBC Complaints Unit], ... does not believe that academic techniques of content analysis of the type used by News-watch can be used to assess bias. It boils down to that, to him, that 9:4 imbalance was totally irrelevant because any attempt at ‘simple quantification’ of BBC content is not helpful. He argues that views about the EU/EEC are not generally ‘binary’ and that in any case, someone who might be classed as ‘pro-EU’ might actually have been making an impartial contribution.

The last one is quite a good point. But someone classed as pro-Brexit might also be capable of an impartial contribution too, of course --evidently not for the BBC. 

News Watch has pursued its complaints to Government regulating bodies and to the courts, without success. The BBC remains safe from NW's criticism, regulating itself, applying its own standards of 'due impartiality', an undefinable term, meaning, in effect, whatever BBC broadcasters define it as meaning. The BBC has advisers and regulators of course -- they are often BBC people too.

News Watch is struggling with current ideological campaigns running at the BBC, principally favouring the usual politics of climate change and gender diversity, but here, I am obliged to their earlier work on Brexit -- and embarrassed not to have summarised it before.There is a large dossier on Europe and Brexit.

Highlights include that in one radio programme in 2018:

18 of the 24 [speakers]  were pro-EU/anti-Brexit; only three were anti-EU/pro-Brexit; two contributors made points both for and against; and one was neutral.  The imbalance was startling. The 18 who made negative points on Brexit delivered 3,824 words (76 percent of words spoken by guests in this category), those speaking positively 352 words (seven per cent), and mixed/neutral speakers 838 words (17 per cent). The anti-Brexit to pro-Brexit word count ratio was thus almost 11 to one. The ratio of pro-EU to anti-EU speakers in this category was 6:1. 

A radio programme 2018 introduced a feature called a 'reality check',  a mechanism that [the BBC] say is ‘objective’checking the reality of Brexit:'. The BBC’s ‘reality check’ correspondent Chris Morris...[had earlier] ...presented a five-part series called Brexit: a Guide for the Perplexed. His lens was so distorted that 18 out his 24 main interviewees were anti-Brexit and only seven per cent of the words spoken were from the withdrawal perspective.

After a complaint was received about a radio programme in 2018 a standard BBC defence was offered: 

that the BBC was receiving complaints that its Brexit coverage was biased from both ‘sides’, those who supported Brexit and those who opposed it. Because of this, it was risibly suggested, complaints of editorial imbalance must be unfounded.... two BBC bigwigs – Gavin Allen, controller of daily news programmes, and Ric Bailey, chief political adviser – confirmed why, in their view, the BBC’s coverage was completely impartial and met Charter requirements.... Today presenter Nick Robinson – now seemingly firmly ensconced as the Corporation’s defender-in-chief – was wheeled out to defend the relentless tide of anti-Brexit negativity.

Citing another careful content analysis in 2018, Craig Byers of the website Is the BBC Biased?:

painstakingly tracked every mention on BBC programmes of the word ‘Brexit’ between Monday and Friday last week (April 16-20).

What he found was a deluge of Brexit negativity. Craig’s blog needs to be read in full to appreciate the sheer scale. It permeated every element of its news output and even percolated down to BBC1’s The One Show and EastEnders, which had a pointed reference to these ‘tough Brexit times’. In the BBC’s world, Brexit was a threat to EU immigrants (in the context of the Windrush developments), to farmers, to interest rates, to airlines, to personal privacy (via Cambridge Analytica), to house prices, to security in Northern Ireland, and more.

Perhaps the best single item is News-Watch's  summary of the BBC's output 'The Brexit Collection', its own collection of Brexit programmes (so presumably a collection that represents the BBC's unbiased policy), broadcast post-referendum, when there was all the turmoil of negotiation and threats to organise Parliamentary coups reported in this blog, and a big push for a second referendum  News-Watch.co says its analysis shows :

Brexit came under sustained negative attack... Analysis by News-watch shows that only 23% of contributors in the programmes as a whole spoke in favour of Brexit, against 58% in favour of Remain and 19% who gave a neutral or factual commentary...Nine programmes and six features, amounting to 5 hours 20 minutes of programming, were strongly anti-Brexit, contained unchallenged predictions that civil unrest and rioting were now on the horizon and cast the ‘out’ vote in negative terms, inferring that the result had been a consequence of racism and xenophobia
 

...Nine programmes and six features, amounting to 5 hours 20 minutes of programming, were strongly anti-Brexit, contained unchallenged predictions that civil unrest and rioting were now on the horizon and cast the ‘out’ vote in negative terms, inferring that the result had been a consequence of racism and xenophobia

A specific example was :

Brexit Street (occasional series PM [a BBC radio programme] , 20 July – 12 August, 2016). This was a totally flawed exercise in which an atypical street with atypical problems was depicted as representative of the Brexit vote.The series began on Radio 4’s PM programme in July, and its premise is that a regular stream of reports from this ‘ordinary street’ in Thornaby-on-Tees (between Middlesbrough and Stockton) will illuminate the underlying reasons for the referendum vote and its subsequent impact on residents and the locale. However, research by News-watch has identified it is not an ordinary street at all. House prices there are a third of the national average, and the local council has taken a very high number of asylum seekers, many of whom have been housed in ‘Brexit Street’ itself. The reporter, Emma Jane Kirby spoke of houses peppered with satellite dishes, low home ownership, high unemployment and daytime street drinkers. The focus of the early programmes has been on the problems of the asylum seekers and the apparent negative attitudes of locals towards them, including verbal and physical abuse and Swastika graffiti painted onto doors. The initial choice of interviewees has also included a high number of unemployed people who are very angry with the government that it has allowed Teesside to become rundown. To date, the interviewees have all been drawn from the DE social grades, and thus in a fundamental overall sense, the choice of material cannot at all representative of the national Brexit vote. Thus PM is being deeply misleading in its claims about the series. They have chosen a street where problems related to recent incomers are disproportionately high, and the intent seems to try show that the Brexit vote was based heavily on such tensions. Clearly, they may have been an element of voting choice, but not to this extent.

 

The analysis is focused on radio programmes which is a limitation, and there is a lack of methods to analyses specific images in TV programmes -- they need Glasgow Media Group for that. Even so, the 'serious' TV output from the BBC -- news and current affairs -- clearly falls within the scope of this analysis.

 

 

 

Long fight still on

I can't believe it has been so long! Thanks to you loyal readers who are still accessing this blog.

 

In the UK there is still a strong Remainer core in the media and in Parliament, probably given added energy by the rise of Reform in the polls and the need to pin 'lies' on Farage (Reform's leader) as well as on Boris Johnson.

 

The anti-Johnson material was given new legs by the publication of the Inquiry into the Covid emergency, which highlighted indecision (!) in Johnson's Government, but also tried to pin the issue down (so the press said) to the  refusal to believe 'the' science about lockdown and its effect in saving lives. This is really still contested of course, but not for Lady Hallett who chaired the Inquiry. She is a lawyer.

 

The Remain Holy Cause was given legs by a long rumour of a 'reset' (I mentioned it in the February blog entry) which was to let us 'cooperate' with the EU and remove barriers to English sausages entering Northern Ireland in exchange for...well, there was the problem. It seemed two stumbling blocs were the French demand for extra fishing permits, and the likely cost of contributing to some sort of European defence fund. These now seem pretty unsellable to an increasingly disillusioned electorate, and/or likely to increase support for Reform, so the Cause is hibernating again.

 

The blessed Briefings for Britain is tirelessly arguing about the flimsy evidence for economic harm caused by Brexit, despite that being pretty well taken for granted in the media. Their latest blog article is exemplary and I recommend it --here. The headline says it all:

 

There is no evidence that Brexit has damaged UK productivity growth

 

 

The Trump has sounded...

I am glad to say that Briefings for Britain is a lot more assiduous than I am in continually monitoring Remainer stuff. Remainers never give up it seems.

 Probably encourgaed by Starmer's and Labour's talk of a need to 'reset' relation with  the EU, especially over trade and defnece, and Starmer's actual attendance at an EU leaders' meeting, there has been another surge in campaigning to 'rejoin' in some form. Usually, this amounts to some form of trade agreement, rarely specified: when it has come to details, it seems to turn on the usual demands for French fishing rights in exchange for cuts in 'red tape'.

There is talk of reviving the old defence arrangements too.

Trump's eruptions have thrown everything into the air ,of course, with threats of tariffs on EU exports, and possible exemptions for the UK, and a refusal to fund European defence to anywhere near the same extent. Starmer says he will not choose between the US and the EU but he would be crazy to choose the EU if it came to it, as everyone now realizes.

It was interesting to see Trump spokespersons like Vance praising Brexit, and the egregious Sebastian Gorka also winding up the BBC by sneering at  Remoaners in a recent interview, while congratulating the independence-minded folk who voted for Brexit. Poor BBC interviewer V Derbyshire nearly choked!

Anyway, for the moment it has left Starmer replaying and updating the plot of old James Bond movies. Britain is now some valued independent third party between not Russia and the US, but the EU and the US. Despite Labour ranting about Trump for a decade and supporting the Democrats at every turn, Starmer still thinks there is a special relationship!

What of popular pressure to rejoin that we heard a lot about? Over to R Tombs of Briefing for Britain:

There was an interesting article in last week’s Sunday Times....centred on presenting a report carried out for the wealthy pro-EU lobby group Best for Britain by a company called Frontier Economics, a consultancy chaired by Dame Sharon White.  She was, readers may recall, a former senior civil servant in the Treasury (a notoriously anti-Brexit department)...

All these reports have to try to perform the ingenious trick of showing that aligning more closely with the EU would somehow make us more economically successful than its actual members.   ..

Caroline Wheeler presented the results of the poll like this:

… in every seat in Great Britain bar Clacton, the most popular option was for the UK to improve trade access with the EU even if it required the UK to follow some specific rules, standards and regulations. In Farage’s seat, Clacton, the results were extremely close, with 42 per cent opposing and 39 per cent supporting....[BUT] ...The questions asked had the effect of splitting the number who did not want realignment with the EU into two groups, those who wanted no change (19 percent), and those who actually wanted fewer links with the EU (22 percent).  The remaining 18 percent were understandably unsure.  By this simple method, the minority in favour of closer alignment (41 percent) could be presented as ‘the most popular option’.  Had the poll simply asked ‘Are you in favour of closer ties with the EU?’ the result of this sample would have been 41 percent each.

[More, an accompanying] map gives the percentages opposing or favouring realignment with the EU for every constituency in the country. [i.e. with  'realignment' and consequences for actual voting, not just an opinion poll]  It shows that only Scotland forms a block of support for closer ties with the EU, especially northern Scotland (areas held presently by the Lib Dems), parts of central Scotland (held by Labour) and to a lesser extent areas held by the SNP.  Of course, only close alignment with the EU gives any hope at all to Scottish nationalists.  Yet even in these relatively pro-EU areas, only 50-51 percent favour closer EU ties...[There are islands of support for the EU like Cambridge] yet ...In most of central England, the percentage eager for closer ties with Brussels is in the low 30s....[and]...Who could fail to notice that the proportion of people in favour of realignment with the EU today is far lower than the proportion who voted ‘Remain’ in 2016 – despite years of anti-Brexit propaganda?

 

Still a few puzzles to resolve here when the day job permits but the usual sound advice -- check the small print!

 

 

Trahison des clercs -- academics for Remain

 Well, not so much trahison really...entirely predictable if you are as cynical about academics as I am. I found them open-minded, fair,even 'objective' in their own subject areas, but naive mouthpieces of (petty) bourgeois ideology for anything outside. 

So it was for Brexit. Prof R. Tombs is the exception ('Robert Paul Tombs is a British historian of France. He is professor emeritus of French history at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge'). He has bravely stuck to his pro-Brexit guns, produced various articles and broadcasts, at least one book (This Sovereign Isle), and founded and contributed to Briefings for Brexit/Britain

He has a post in the lates Briefings.. summarising some of the extraordinary reactions of most British intellectuals and academics. I have noted some of them in this blog too (see Europe in the Imaginary 2017). Tombs's earlier work,including his book, takes on the view of English exceptionalism, arguing that the proportions of voters not supporting the EU in the UK was pretty constant, and was about the same as those in France, Italy, Spain, Holland and even Germany (it might be even higher now). However, '"Europhiles" seem oblivious of attitudes and developments in Europe'

[There was after the Referendum]  consternation, grief, anger, alarm....[with Brexit as ] ‘among the worst of the current worldwide horde of nationalist populisms’[according to Prof Garton Ash]...The intelligentsia, from actors to academics, participated volubly in the national quarrel.  They were overwhelmingly Remain (nearly 90 percent of academics, for example).  Over-representation in the media, especially the BBC, gave them ample opportunity to stoke controversy.

The issue was too complex for the electorate.  It was too difficult, some declared, for democracy itself: when the wrong people formed the majority it was mere ‘populism’.  Leave voters were dismissed as ignorant (‘low-information’), poor (‘left behind’), bigoted, and gullible dupes of the tabloid press, the Russians, and ‘silver-tongued demagogues such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove’ (Garton Ash again).^[5]  Leavers were anyway old: depriving the young of their promised land, ‘driven by nostalgia’–this became a key Remainer theme—’for a world where passports were blue, faces were white and the map was coloured imperial pink’, in the words of the Liberal Democrat party leader Sir Vince Cable.^[6]  It became common to describe Brexit supporters as ‘gammon’.  Many would soon die, so their vote was invalid, and should be cancelled or re-run.  If both sides sometimes used inflammatory language, only that attacking Leave voters was biological.

This overwhelmingly hostile reaction to the vote was not based on a positive case for EU membership...they were ‘anti-Brexit’ rather than ‘pro-EU’, and had little to say about the EU itself....The many publications that have appeared since 2016—several by established academics, prominent novelists or well-known media commentators—nearly all share the assumption of English exceptionalism: that England is different from all the other ‘Europeans’.  This is the main unifying thread of what I would call ‘anti-Brexitism’....Voting Leave, they thought, must be an English psychological aberration, not a rational political choice...Fintan O’Toole, saw ‘the Brexit psychodrama’ as a product of ‘the English reactionary imagination’.^[13]  He proposed as evidence the success of the sado-masochistic novel Fifty Shades of Grey

...nostalgia became the favoured explanation of Brexit: especially nostalgia for empire and/or for the Second World War....Bernard Porter, emeritus professor of Modern History at Newcastle (for whom Brexit supporters, when not moved by ‘plain stupidity’, are fascists) takes a similar view in Britain’s Contested History.  His fundamental assertion is that Britain is uniquely obsessed with its past  

Vice-chancellors collectively spoke of their corporate interests.  Much emphasis was given to EU research funding, although the UK in fact contributed more that it received.  When historian Sir Noel Malcolm worked this out from the rather opaque official statistics, the University of Cambridge repeatedly declined to publish his findings.^[ 

Not all British intellectuals were anti-Brexit. ...The leading Left-wing political philosopher Perry Anderson wrote a series of long and excoriating attacks on the EU...He summed it up as ‘dilute sovereignty without meaningful democracy, compulsory unanimity without participant equality, cult of free markets without care of free trade.’  

...writers of fiction were certainly no better at understanding what was going on around them.  Not all admittedly were as blindly angry as the novelist Ian McEwen...A gang of angry old men … are shaping the future of the country against the inclinations of its youth....Jonathan Coe (a winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Prix Médicis and the Costa Book Award) wrote Middle England, a novel in which nice people were Remainers and Brexiteers were old, bigoted and manipulated by sinister forces

There is no strong connection between the EU and anti-racism, ‘decolonization’, trans-genderism, ‘green’ radicalism, and now pro-Palestinian activism.  But this set of issues has in common with anti-Brexitism the rejection of traditional identities and sentiments....The anti-Brexit intelligentsia rejects what it thinks Brexit stands for: namely, a popular revival of the nation state, condemned as archaic, absurd, xenophobic, racist, and ‘White’.  John Gray comments that ‘the progressive mind detests national identity with passionate intensity'

 Tombs ends this well-argued piece with this:

There is a final irony.  Anti-Brexitism has become itself a form of Left-wing populism: it is, as the journalist Tom McTague puts it, ‘an easy and ultimately populist explanation for Britain’s current woes.’[45]  This reflects the failure of most intellectuals to understand the Brexit vote, or more precisely their refusal to do so.  In consequence, as the EU turns increasingly to the populist Right, as the disadvantages of EU membership become clearer, the British Isles are turning to the populist Left, in the belief that Brexit has failed. 

Do read the original piece!

 

Myths and the Enlightenment

 An excellent issue of Briefings for Britain this week with two excellent articles. The tireless C McBride discusses a series of 'myths' about Brexit, often originating in the Office for Budget Responsiblity (OBR) who seem dedicated to releasing statistics showing that Brexit has produced serious costs.

McBride had already produced a post questioning the common view, initiated by the OBR that Brexit had cost the UK economy 4% of growth. This is a very commonly repeated statement.The BBC faithfully reproduced it a few days ago, during their Election coverage, after saying that no-one is talking about Brexit during the Election They want us to blame Farage and not vote Reform, of course. They reproduced in large scale font the OBR forecast that Brexit would lead to a 4% diminution of growth (and the presenter just about added the caveat 'in the long term' in the original statement). As we all know, we are all dead in the long term.

There is a revised statement by the OBR says McBride: Brexit ‘will reduce long-run productivity by 4% relative to remaining in the EU’.As she points out this actually depends on who we compare the UK with in the EU. As this blog notes, previous comparisons have involved comparisons with the economy of the USA!   Otherwise, we are involved in the tricky business of projecting from past trends.

 Mcbride supplies a plausible (not perfect) concrete comparator -- France -- with a similar GDP: 'France remained in the EU and their GDP is [still] little different from the UK’s.' Both France and the UK have fallen behind their growth rates before the Referendum -- so something else might be better able to explain the relative decline in growth (and we have candidates ranging from Covid to the effects of the 2008 Bank crash, of course).

That post also takes on several other assumptions made in OBR predictions. One prediction in particular is the subject of a separate post.  In this one, the OBR produces scary graphs showing an apparent fall in 'trade intensity' for the UK compared to other G7 countries.

The first weasel is to make this a graph of trade intensity, not actual volumes of trade. Intensity is a technical measure of the proportion of GDP made up by trade. As McBride says:

if a country’s trade remained unchanged, its trade intensity could increase if its GDP fell and decrease if its GDP rose. In this case, Trade Intensity would be a contrary indicator of economic performance and tell you nothing about changes in a country’s trade.

Actual trade intensity not indexed shows the UK in the middle of the G7 countries.

The OBR measured not even actual trade intensity but indexed trade intensity, indexed to 2019. Then the other G7 countries are not rendered as individual lines on a graph but collected together as a curious shaded shape. McBride says this does not show volatility -- that Japan was at the bottom of the shape in 2019 and at the top in 2022

It is not clear what the OBR measured as 'trade' anyway -- just goods? Their revised graph for 2023 shows a different picture -- different measurement?

The BBC faithfully reproduced one of the more egregious sleights of hand in its discussion of the Election coverage,saying that no-one is talking about Brexit. They want us to blame Farage and not vote Reform, of course. They reproduced in large font the OBR forecast that Brexit would lead to a 4% diminution of growth (and the persenter just about added the caveat 'in the long term' while the graphic dominated in the background

The same item also sagely reminded us that Brexit was still an issue because all the plans announced by the parties for growth still depended on our relationship with the EU. This is a taken-for granted reference for the argument that trade with the EU has been damaged by Brexit?

Briefings for Britain is on that case too. The invaluable C McBride has a post denying the myth that Britain has 'walked away' from its 'largest trading partner', pointing out that we have a very favourable tariff-free trade deal with the EU: 'the only EU trade deal that does this.'. Her data shows no relative decline in exports or imports: 'UK goods exports to both EU and non-EU countries have moved in tandem...Nor have UK goods imports from the EU fallen due to Brexit.'.

There is an earlier apparent change because of definitional changes, however:

clothing and footwear must be wholly manufactured in the UK or the EU, to be counted as UK or EU goods although the materials can be imported. This caused UK exports of clothing to the EU to fall by 60% and footwear to fall by 70% after Brexit, as many of the UK’s high-street fashion brands manufacture their goods in Asia. At the same time, UK imports of clothing and footwear from the EU both dropped by about 25%....This doesn’t mean UK or EU consumers no longer purchase these items, just that they are no longer counted in UK or EU trade statistics as UK or EU exports, but are now recorded as an import from the country of their manufacture: China, Vietnam, Turkey, Bangladesh, Morocco etc. The UK clothing and footwear companies still make money from these sales and the bulk of the revenue in this business is still earned in the UK 

This misattribution of trade to the EU port where goods were landed was known as the Rotterdam effect. It massively distorts EU trade statistics

 While she is there:

UK companies that export to or import from the EU must now fill in customs forms and this will have some cost to them, but previously those costs were borne by UK and EU taxpayers. Being a member of the EU was never free....UK consumers have not only been paying for these companies’ EU trading costs for years but they were also forced to buy more expensive EU products because cheaper non-EU goods were made uncompetitive by the addition of EU tariffs or restricted completely by tiny EU tariff-free quotas.

 The reasons for an initial fall in exports were:

the Transition Period when the UK continued to trade with the EU as an EU member, so Brexit was not the cause of this fall.[well--the uncertainty produced by it might have been? Project Fear didn't help]

the Covid lockdowns of non-essential production in the UK and in many of our component suppliers. The UK’s largest goods export sector – Machinery and Transport equipment – suffered key component shortages in 2020, 2021 and 2022  due to Covid supply chain disruption....the international travel bans during Covid meant most airlines could not afford to order new planes.

 Finally:

The UK’s largest individual export market for both goods and services is the US but the UK doesn’t have a trade agreement with the US, instead, we trade on WTO terms and this seems to suit both countries.

Hope springs eternal in the Remainer soul

The UK General Election is a pretty dull affair with no criminal cases, porn stars, guns or senility. Instead we have the same old, same old --promises that no-one believes will be kept with sinister agendas lurking hidden behind the bland PR. 

Remainers/rejoiners have not given up hope even now, however, hoping that one of the sinister agendas lurks within Starmer's discussion of developing 'closer ties with Europe'.Not rejoining as such, of course. 

One Trojan horse might be proposals to allow the free movement of young people, for example. Who could possibly object to the idea that the young should be free to live, love, and above all work wherever they want in 'Europe'. We will have forgotten, surely, that this will mostly mean a one-way flow, of course, and could be the thin end of a wedge, but won't it be lovely to have bright young French, German and Spanish people serving our coffee in London again?

A Rawnsley in the Observer is one of several recently saying the whole issue must be revisited anyway:

In all this noisy election debate, why is there a conspiracy of silence about Brexit?

When the histories are written, every other failure of this Tory era will be a footnote compared with that epic folly.

Lest we forget, it is all down to the smooth-tongued liars and misleaders:

With Partygate and all the other scandals on his watch, Boris Johnson recklessly tested Britain’s tolerance for being governed by a prime minster who flagrantly debased standards in public life. With the maxi-disaster of her mini-budget, Liz Truss conducted a deranged experiment that exploded not just in her face, but blew the doors off the country....Rishi Sunak, who advocated Brexit, doesn’t want to talk about it for the obvious reason that none of the promises which accompanied that enterprise – “a new golden age” anyone? – has come true. He will also be aware that most voters have concluded it has been such a calamity for the UK that we ought never to have torn ourselves apart from the EU....Labour seeks the support of people who backed “out”, especially in working-class areas of the Midlands and northern England, and the party’s pollsters have cautioned the Labour leader that these voters really don’t want to be made to think about Brexit.

Of course there are one or two other things to discuss.I can't see quite how these are tied to Brexit for Rawnsley -- they would be solved if we were still in?:

there’s a climate crisis that is increasing in severity...decayed public services when the national finances are fragile. Although the creaking state of the NHS, schools, courts, prisons and other key elements of the public realm are supposed to be central to this election, we are not going to have a full and frank conversation about how to revive them because this would entail having an adult discourse about taxation....The voters are right to treat everyone’s claims with deep suspicion. Read my lips, no one is being candid about tax...council tax is long overdue reform. Did you know that Buckingham Palace pays less in the property tax than a family in the average three-bedroom semi in Blackpool?...a tiny group of the UK’s wealthiest estates were able to shelter nearly £2bn of assets from inheritance tax in the 2020-21 tax year. That would buy you a lot of hospital scanners, operating theatres and A&E suites.

There is also a bit of a slience about other expensive causes too, of course, not only Covid and the recession but the Ukraine war. Reckless old Boris was quite keen on that too.

Then there is the ever-lovable P Toynbee. The background is a recent noticeable swing to the 'right' in elections to the paper tiger European Parliament, which has alarmed liberals in Europe. Not Toynbee though:

Europe is lurching right on immigration. Despite Farage and Sunak’s best efforts, Britain will not follow

These [European and British] demagogues are good at their art. A snap poll anointed Farage the “winner” in last week’s TV debate on Britain’s Got Talent criteria, his booming oratory shamelessly free of factchecking. Only one sulphurous issue propels him, the same immigration fears and factoids that power the far right across Europe.

And the voters, presumably

That political elixir blends nationalism with disappointment and justified grievance, so easily blaming migrants for a lack of housing or NHS appointments, low wages, bad jobs. Those raw emotions have too often felt too visceral for conventional politicians to dare confront, leaving them mumbling awkwardly and promising the impossible. Borders do matter, determining nationhood and who shares in taxing and spending. Porous borders signal a state malfunction, as images of arrivals – mainly men – packed in perilous inflatables allow this small proportion of immigrants to be gleefully misrepresented as the bulk of big numbers here by invitation.

[Farage] and Boris Johnson, outstanding rogues of the era, are gifted performers licensed to say whatever pleases: theatricality, quick wit and a dose of sociopathy is all it takes (other EU populists share those traits).

All it takes is a calm lecture to these ignorant peasants who voted for these charlatans, and voters will soon give up their prejudiced ideas:

Instead of explaining the need for foreign workers, governments took the coward’s way and promised what they can’t and shouldn’t deliver.... Dishonesty about immigration has bred the deepest distrust of politics. Delivering an honest explanation is easier now than ever before, as public opinion has swung markedly towards understanding migration. Most people can see the need: more than 150,000 vacancies for care workers leave 1.6 million frail people left in neglect. Cafes and restaurants close for lack of chefs. Britain’s nuclear projects are short of the 138,000 workers they need by 2030. Who will fix the National Grid, water pipes and sewage outflows, let alone build Labour’s 1.5m homes, with the number of construction workers in the UK falling by 14% since 2019? Few think it reasonable to count valuable foreign students in immigration numbers, as they go home. But leaving all this unargued too often lets Faragism win the day....

[Labour] Policy to get those more than 2.5 million sick people cured and into work, as well as investing in missing skills, apprenticeships and further education, should [!] lead to more home recruitment. Raising pay and improving career paths start with a fair pay agreement for care workers. 

We shall see if a fissiparous European far right bound by anti-immigration sentiments can hold together. Back here, the sight of countries across the channel turning rightwards leaves distressed Spectator writers protesting that Britain’s left turn is “a wild anachronism”. But in Britain, it’s they who are now the left-behind dying breed. I note their language changing to describing Europe as “our continent”: do they yearn to return?

Very well, alone then! Very suitable for the 80th anniversay of D-Day. A nationalist dog-whistle, one might say.

Toynbee does quote a very good source for her views: 'Prof Rob Ford shows more than half of voters think immigration levels should stay the same or need to rise'. Her reference leads to an absurd tweet, but the actual podcast by Ford is much more subtle and complex. 

To be very brief, the issue of immigration became more of a symbolic one than a 'rational' debate about labour supply for BOTH sides during the Referendum. Taking back conrol meant an abstract issue of restoring national government rather than EC government and Brexit was enough to reassure people that control had been reasserted whatever the numbers,so the issue lost its sting. For Remainers, immigration became the symbolic issue that represented all their key values of tolerance and civility that they saw embodied in the EU and challenged by nasty Brexiteers, again irrespective of the economic case --they are still fighting this symbolic struggle. Ford also notes that 'immigration' is also entwined with racism, with Black and Asian immigrants before European ones, and that Britain is a tolerant society there, especially  among the young -- so questions about 'immigrants' might not distinguish the issues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brexit not 'a disaster' shock

 The Graun clings to credibility (and readability, although I wouldn't pay for it) by continuing to employ the blessed L Elliott who defies them with pieces like this:

I’ve got news for those who say Brexit is a disaster: it isn’t. That’s why rejoining is just a pipe dream

 any successful [rejoining] campaign would need to do two things: convince voters that the UK economy had become a basket case since the Brexit vote and that life for those still in the club was so much better.

Neither criterion has been met. Britain’s economic performance in the seven years since 2016 has been mediocre but not the full-on horror show that was prophesied by the remain camp during the weeks leading up to the referendum. The doomsday scenario – crashing house prices (falls of up to 18% could result, warned then chancellor George Osborne) and mass unemployment – never happened.

there have been signs of the economy adjusting. Nissan’s decision to invest more than £1bn in its Sunderland plant with the intention of building three new electric car models is an example of that. Microsoft’s £2.5bn investment in the growing UK AI sector is another.

That’s not to say that the process is complete. Brexit provided opportunities to do things differently but those opportunities have so far not been exploited

Covid-19 scarred the economy deeply and the long-term costs of ill health and children missing out on school will grow over time. Even so, Brexit Britain has recovered more strongly than either France or Germany from the pandemic. Relative performance matters. The rejoin camp tends not to focus on what is happening on the other side of the Channel, and it is not hard to see why.... Over a prolonged period, not just since the arrival of Covid-19, the EU’s economic performance has been woeful.

A number of factors are to blame for the EU’s economic woes. The one-size-fits-all nature of the single currency is one; the lack of a federal budget to match in size that of the US is another; the adherence to neoliberal economic ideas– such as tough controls on the size of budget deficits – a third. The problems go right to the heart of the EU.

at the same time as its economy has struggled, the number of migrants has increased. One result has been the rise of aggressively rightwing politics...Something has gone seriously awry when politics in four of the founding members of the European project have turned so ugly....Sweden and Finland have both seen the emergence of ultranationalist rightwing parties....Britain is one of the relatively few European countries to buck this trend.

Throughout the whole campaign, a major silence was maintained on what  the EU could offer exactly, at least once the original Great Lie was nailed -- that the EU made a net contribution to the UK, generously funding community renewal projects all over the country. The myth remained that the EU was the source of economic prosperity, but even the Europeans doubted that could continue. 

 

That left only the romantic myth of 'Europe' as some blessed community based on British cultural cringe and memories of nice holidays.That might still energise apparent 'support' among the UK young for rejoining, although even el Graun is sceptical that it will lead to any actual politics.

 

Er...Brexit?...Wha?....gimme pencil...where do I put the X?...doh!

 News from the Times today ( subscription required). It is a cracker and I have mostly just reproduced it

The cleverer people are, the more likely they were to vote to stay in the European Union, a study has found.

Among those Britons in the top 10 per cent by a measure of cognitive performance, 73 per cent voted remain in 2016. Among those in the bottom 10 per cent, only 40 per cent did....

The relationship persisted, albeit less strongly, even when taking into account factors such as income, education and age, implying that it was not solely a reflection of cultural effects. It also remained when the scientists looked at couples in which husbands and wives voted in different ways. The remain-voting partner was, they found, more likely to do better on cognitive tests.

There is one bit I don't get -- could be a typo or something?:

According to the findings, only the cleverest third of leave voters would be classed as of above average intelligence among [compared to those among?] remain voters.

Chris Dawson, from the University of Bath — a remain voter — said that people should be wary of interpreting his findings. “People shouldn’t get angry with this, or joyful, depending on who they voted for,” he said. “This is about differences at a population level. If you drew two random people who voted leave or remain, it says very little about differences that might exist between those people.”

Very cautious here then -- not so cautious at the end .

The results came from analysing an on-running longitudinal study called Understanding Society. Since 2009 this has been following a nationally representative sample of households, collecting a wealth of data, including their performance on a suite of standardised tests. These tests involved assessments of reasoning, working memory and numeracy. More recently, it added questions about how people voted in the 2016 referendum.

Dawson and his colleagues looked at 3,183 couples involved in the study.

They also looked at the 463 heterosexual married couples who had voted in different ways but had managed to get through the referendum without divorcing. The fact that Brexit voting half [the Brexit voter?] in these couples was also on average the poorer cognitive performer was especially interesting, Dawson said. “If you have people living in the same household, having the same experiences of living in the UK, it controls for so much.” [so much other than cognitive performance?] 

Bit vague about which study provided the data, whether they were averaged from both etc. I might look it up. There is also the issue of  the standardised test, of course, and what other data they gathered...

Other scientists warned that although the study did appear to find a link between intelligence [same as what was measured by the test?] and voting intention [as opposed to actual voting behaviour?], it could not be used to say definitively that it was causal — that the reason people voted leave was because they were less clever....

“There’s an obvious temptation, perhaps particularly if one takes a certain set of views about the referendum, the campaign and its outcome, to assume that the finding of an association between measures of cognitive ability and the way people voted in the Brexit referendum means that having lower cognitive ability caused people to be more likely to vote Leave,” Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of statistics at the Open University, said. “While this research doesn’t rule that possibility out, it certainly can’t establish that it’s true.”

Establishing causality, rather than only correlation, is a standard problem with observational studies such as this. “People who voted in different ways in the referendum differed in a great number of respects other than their cognitive ability,” McConway said. “Some of those other differences may have been correlated with cognitive ability, but not caused by cognitive ability.”

Even so, Dawson said, in his view there were plausible reasons that intelligence may have been be one factor. “It’s an uncomfortable thing to say, but I think it’s important to be said. We have increasing amounts of fake news and it’s getting more and more sophisticated.”

[Dawson] said there was evidence that misinformation had played a role in the Brexit vote, and that cognitive ability was one factor determining whether people could spot fake news.

This is not tested as such though in the items specified?

 “This suggests that something we all have to live with is essentially the result of people being able to spread fake information and fake promises that some people just couldn’t distinguish from reality.”

 A major speculation here, which ties things up really nicely, joining suspicions that Leave voters are thick and nasty (and racist) with the stuff about fake news and fake promises on the bus and all that

 

 

 

A peep behind the scenes with the Observer

I am resisting the paranoia that sees every twist in UK politics as moves in the vendetta against Brexiteers in the Government. Certainly,some prominent ones have come to grief lately -- P Shore has been enmenshed in a sex scandal, and S Braverman has been dismissed as a Minister, ostensibly for opopsing the Government's immigration policy. Meanwhile the slimy abnd definitely dodgy D Cameron has been brought back as Foreign Secretary, having been made a Lord first because no-one actually voted for him as an MP, or probably would.

A piece in the Observer fills in the blanks, rather triumphantly, and under a slightly strange heading. It is nice and 'balanced' -- that is pretty speculative...

Britain still needs post-Brexit deals - but has the EU moved on?

many [in the EU are] seeing the new foreign secretary David Cameron as the latest step in a rapprochement...Another senior diplomat adds: “David Cameron was very useful for Germany, because the UK could play the role of mediator in rows over the budget with France.”...Among senior officials there is a mood of anticipation about what someone of his international stature will bring to UK-EU relations.

However..

But in reality there is little chance of the trade deal being improved or re-opened, whether Cameron remains in the Foreign Office after the next general election or a Labour minister takes over...

See-sawing back again,and the usual crap about the many, the some, 'among', 'sources'...

Some see alignment already happening at government level, citing the recent reversal of plans for a new UK safety mark to replace the bloc’s CE badge...Sources point to how quickly a corner was turned in UK-EU relations when Sunak and former foreign secretary James Cleverly took office last autumn...

And again...

Many, however, detect a lingering nervousness...“There is a sense still that the UK could still renege on its promises.” [that old calumny] ..An example of this was the threat by Suella Braverman, when she was home secretary, to leave the European convention on human rights. This risked leading to termination or suspension of the UK’s post-Brexit policing pact with the EU, as human rights obligations underpin the trade and cooperation agreement.

Maybe that's why they REALLY sacked her then? I think we should be told!

 

Small beer still served...

They never give up,and it is still in the same style. El Garubndino, who else, has this as a headline: 

 Brexit has hit UK’s economic openness, says Bank of England governor 

 

The actual article is nowhere near as scary, as usual: 

In an apparent swipe at those calling for the UK to develop a separate rulebook for banking and insurance activities, Andrew Bailey said free trade needed strong regulation based on agreements with foreign watchdogs....The governor is known to be concerned that a series of panics in financial markets since the Covid-19 pandemic was declared in early 2020 have required strong central bank intervention....financial investments known as money market funds, which lubricate buying and selling in short-term securities, were especially vulnerable and needed to be overseen by more robust international agreements.

Labour sidles back into Europe -- if they stop the boats

There has beem much excited discussion in luvvie circles lately about new rapprochements with the EC. It all began when the UK rejoined the Horizon Science programme. We could get European collaborators on science projects -- no doubt very good -- but there were some suggestions that this would also lead to extra funding for science. This is the same old stuff we have had ever since the Referendum Campaign --any funds flowing to the UK from the EC must be 'European money'.

Nevertheless, BBC News announced excitedly that new possibilities were on the cards in the form of various special deals. Curtice, a confessed psephologist, also said that 2/3 of the British population now wanted some sort of new relationship with Europe ( I haven't looked that up yet).

No surprise then to find the GHraun getting all excited with this

Labour will seek major rewrite of Brexit deal, Keir Starmer pledges

Party leader says he will pursue a closer trading relationship with the EU and much better terms for the UK than Boris Johnson managed

Starmer apparently claimed he would seek:

a revised deal – on business, veterinary compliance, professional services, security, innovation, research and other areas. He ruled out rejoining the EU, the customs union and the single market.

 But what has changed exactly to make the EU more conciliatory and offer better terms? Even el Graun thinks:

 European appetite for renegotiating a deal that commenced in 2021 is uncertain.

 Another reason for claims that the EC is seeking a new deal might be indicated by the proposal to address a major moral panic and electoral hot potato right here in the UK:

In Paris on Tuesday, Macron and Starmer are expected to discuss post-Brexit relations, as well as a potential returns agreement with the EU to stop people travelling across the Channel in dangerously small boats.

We don't know exactly what they want in exchange yet of course. 

Meanwhile, same issue but lower down:

Labour will not say how many migrants it would accept in EU returns deal

Keir Starmer dismisses Tory claims of plan to oversee 100,000 extra arrivals as ‘complete garbage’

 

'You do the propaganda --I just ask the questions'

This is a classic C4 News view of its own heroic stance on news presented by egregious newscaster K Gurumurthy (Krish)  last night, interviewing a Trump defender.

I know this blog is not about Trump,and God knows I don't want to defend him, but the liberal hysteria takes the same form as it did over Brexit. Liberals just cannot see why anyone can possibly disagree with them over Trump, and get positively nasty and panicky if anyone does.This makes them very vulnerable, but doesn't seem to have any lasting effect on their arrogance. Maybe Lukacs was right and they simply cannot escape their own ideologies? No wonder they hanker for strong men.

Liberal journalists have never done well against informed Trump defenders.A few years ago, S Gorka wiped the floor with a hapless E Davies on Newsnight simply by challenging the source of own of Davies's stories about Trump's intentions. Davies didn't know the source -- Islington dinner parties no doubt -- and Gorka pounced with a tirade about fake news. Davies didn't know that his previous interviewee was at the centre of a scandal (about scamming free tickets on an airline or something) either. That was all over the Web but had not got to Islington, obviously -- another easy goal for Gorka.

A couple of nights ago, M Frei of C4 News questioned a Trump-supporting lawyer about the new charges against him and was reminded that the US First Amendment guaranteed free speech. Slightly surprised, Frei tried to respond by saying it did not allow politicians to tell lies -- and was dismayed to hear that indeed it did, on the grounds that electorates should decide.

Last night, good old Krish tried again, haranguing and interrupting a Trump supporter as ever. The interview had been set up,again as ever, with clips of the Capitol riots of Jan 6th, intercut with Trump speaking, clearly implying Trump had instigated the riots (the 'insurrection' or even 'the coup', C4 had called it -- so had the BBC). News that Trump had been acquitted of impeachment citing that charge was not mentioned -- British liberals cannot believe it.

Krish was well into it, asking the (female) spokesperson if it could be right that a liar was still running for President. She reponded with citing the First Amendment (C4 never watch each other's broadcasts -- or again can't believe contrary answers?) and asked why KM was still pushing this propaganda even before the trial. Hence KM's reply.

He did try once more, asking (unwisely, with a condescending tone) if she had actually read the charges. Damn right she had, she retorted, and asserted that there was no mention in them of any actual law that had been broken. Obvioulsy outgunned, and perhaps to forestall any challenge as to whether he had read the charges, he terminated the interview.

Incidentally, an article in the Times today predicts the same sort of effect of liberal outrage and horror that happened with Brexit -- it makes people even more suspicious of liberals and, in this case,more likely to support Trump, and, longer term,more likely to see the whole system in partisan terms.

Revenge of the Remainers exposed

There have long been suspicions of the Remaineratis in high places working to get their own back -- classic 'woke' moral campaigns against Brexiteers in the Cabinet like Raab, and above all Johnson, of course.

Now another tentacle has emerged into the light with the debacle over the cancellation of a bank account at an elite bank (Coutts).The bank account is Nigel Farage's.

It is an odd tale all round. Would anyone normally care if anyone had their Coutts account cancelled? You need £1m to have an account there or £3m in investments or mortgage. But the nobs managed to score a massive own goal by cancelling Farage because the Chair of Coutts (or is it Natwest?) gossiped to a senior BBC journalist at a charity dinner that Farage's account had been cancelled because his assets had fallen below £1m, the failure.The journo rang the Chair to check next day.She confirmed. The story ran on BBC News. He claimed his business had been damaged -- and his reputation.

Little did they know the man. He got hold of Coutts' personal report on him and found they disapproved of him personally and politically in quite snobbish terms and claimed he would contravene their (mostly EDI) values. He publicised their report and caused a fuss, and gained a lot of public approval from people who responded to the issue that banks of all people should not really have these absurd moral missions, especially when they were taking serious cash from despotic regimes and making megabucks.

The parent bank of Coutts, NatWest,had been very unpopular in the Great Recession of 2008 under another name (RBS) and had been bailed out by the taxpayers (who still owned 40% of the shares).

The usual stupidity ensued. The leaker apologised.The Board of NatWest expressed full confidence in her. Some hours later she resigned.Some days later so did the Chair of Coutts.

The liberal press has been in a real dilemma over the whole thing. They can't support the banks who are widely detested. But the last thing they can do is support Farage.The result is a classic attempt to make it all into a Pyrrhic victory for Farage, as in today' s Observer

Whatever one thinks of Nigel Farage, back in the news for bringing about the resignation of NatWest’s chief executive Alison Rose and Coutts boss Peter Flavel, he has been instrumental in changing Britain 

Balance, you see. However, we must continue to remind the reader as strongly as possible that the chap is an utter bounder. Only we can see through him

An almost anachronistically English figure with his beer and blazers, his Carry On laughter and golf-club rhetoric...A virtuoso on the dog whistle...professional rabble-rouser... a gifted blamer of others... a serial loser in British politics...a born disrupter, a habitual fomenter of grievance with zero obligation to produce results...the loudmouth curmudgeon, the carefree voice of old fogeyism, the bar-room bore who thrives on the national stage...a consummate complainer, because his animating passion is to be against things... essentially a destructive talent....

Most curiously of all:

his populist opinions are not that popular with the British public [says an Observer journalist]

The Observer's sales were 136,656 in 2021 

Seven years on -- and some proper analysis

Excellent analysis of the  crisis today in The Full Brexit, especially the short and punchy piece originally published in the Northern Star by G Hoare, pointing to the 'zombification' of the British state as elites sought alliances with their European (and other international) allies and effectively abandoned the need to gain consensus within the national system.

This is a left-wing version to go along with the more familiar right wing 'replacing the electorate' variant which says the liberal petty-bourgeoisie also sought to use international governmental force to impose their worldviews and values by law, knowing they would never persuade the British electorate to adopt them by consent, so attempting to sidestep them. This is directed at all the woke stuff usually, but there is a hard core of 'modernisation' and marketisation.

Global capitalism and personal liberalism have always gone together, of course, as far as the very rich are concerned. 

The petite bourgeoisie hate both the proletariat below and the traditional elite above, and have them both on the list for the tumbrils, choosing targets by opportunity. 

Climate change might have disillusioned them with the globalists for now, but new solar technology and successful car batteries will win them over again no doubt.They will never forgive the proletariat, however, for their supposed (symbolic) racism or sexual intolerance.

Successfully 'developing a new relationship with Europe' for electoral purposes will probably mean adopting (private) human relations stuff, environmental protections (as long as it doesn't restrict agribusiness too much), and lots of other symbolic gestures -- flying Ukrainian flags alongside LGBTQIA+ ones? Increasing the number of celebratory minority days? Decolonising the high street?

Fall of Johnson -- Remainer orgasm

 Dear God it has been bad. I am no fan of Boris and I worried all along that Brexit was left in his hands, but his fall has encouraged the prats no end. Take this:

Brexit was Johnson and Johnson was Brexit. Now that he has gone, Britain must think again

The disgraced former PM and our disastrous exit from the EU were umbilically linked. His fall presents a precious opportunity

Part of this, but not all of it, is about the lies that were integral to both Brexit and Johnson’s fall....lies about Brexit were also the reason why he got into No 10 in the first place. His political banishment and humiliation for one set of lies ought to call into question his earlier political coronation for a different set.

these past few days are fundamentally about Brexit. Until recently, Brexit had become a taboo. It felt inevitable that a generation would have to pass before it was politically possible for a new form of relationship to be constructed with the EU that would undo the harm of the vote in 2016. Economic struggles, the challenges of climate and migration, and the war in Ukraine all make the need for that rebuilding more pressing. A steady shift in public opinion towards closer cooperation, followed by Johnson’s fall, now opens the door to a much more determined re-engagement....

the biggest lie that Johnson ever told, and the one that was most widely believed, was over Brexit. It has resulted in the largest piece of damage of the many he inflicted on the country. Johnson’s fall and unpopularity ought, therefore, to reopen Britain’s relationship with Europe. That is too big a question for this or any other future government to keep locked away in the too-difficult box. It is time, in other words, to take back control.

Pretty desperate stuff, indicated by the really sad links, even for a Graun journalist. They could never make up their mind if they hated Johnson more than Brexit, the upper-classes or the lower. 

The symbolic nature of the whole thing is still clear -- what on earth would  reopening the relationship with Europe actually mean? More free entry for European fruit pickers? Even cheaper strawberries (it's been a great crop this year). Purple passports again? Joining the Euro? More fees for the EC?