‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’
– Dickens, ‘Hard Times’
Perhaps the least-expected effect of Brexit is that I should find myself in sympathy with Thomas Gradgrind, Dickens’s notoriously fact-worshipping school superintendent. Yet perhaps if Thomas Gradgrind had been Director General and Editor-in-chief of the BBC (rather than Tony Hall) we might have fared better in the calamity of Brexit.
Memorandum
to: all news editors and anyone who interviews on the Today programme
from: Thos. Gradgrind Esq. Director General & Editor in chief, BBC
subject: reporting the facts concerning the recent United Kingdom European Union membership referendum
date: 14 July 2016
It has come to my notice that over the coming weeks and months there will be a determined attempt to promote a false narrative concerning the recent EU membership referendum. This attempt emanates from the ERG, a pro-Brexit propaganda machine operating within the Conservative Party, led by Joseph Goebbels /Jacob Rees-Mogg. The aim of this narrative will be to assert that ‘Brexit’ is ‘the will of the British people’ so that any attempt to challenge ‘Brexit’ or in any way question the wisdom of it is tantamount to treason. It also has the notable secondary effect of excusing the Conservative government of any responsibility for ‘Brexit’ since it is not their will but the British people’s.
It is to be expected that the usual client journalists in the Murdoch newspapers, The Telegraph, The Mail and The Express will collaborate in promoting this narrative without scruple. The journalists of the BBC must not abandon their professional principles so lightly. Our flagship radio news programme is ‘Today’, not ‘Toady’. With that in mind, I would draw your attention to the following facts concerning the recent EU membership referendum.
1. The referendum result is not legally binding and the government is not obliged to act on it in any way, regardless of personal undertakings made by David Cameron who has now resigned. The only form of binding referendum is where parliament has already passed the legislation and the electorate are asked whether or not it should be implemented. That was the case in the voting reform referendum in 2011 but it is not the case here. Any interviewer should establish at the outset the fact that it is for the government to decide what action (if any) to take in the light of the referendum. Insisting on this one fact will go a long way to weaken the false narrative to be built on it.
2. Interviewers must invariably challenge the claim that ‘the British people voted for Brexit’ on two grounds: first, the referendum makes no reference to ‘Brexit’, an empty slogan for which there is no agreed definition. The question put was whether the UK should remain in the EU or leave. Any attempt to equate the latter position with ‘Brexit’ should be met by saying that if the two are interchangeable, there can be no objection to using the official wording that everyone understands instead of a popular slogan whose lack of definition is liable to mislead. The second point that must be challenged is the use of the term ‘the British people’. A definition must be insisted on – see point 3 below. As a useful preliminary, interviewers should demand explicit acknowledgement of the fact that the government is elected by the will of the people to act in the best interests of the whole people, not merely a section of it.
3. The fact should be established that the term ‘British people’ properly refers to the 66.5 million inhabitants of the UK, while the term ‘electorate’ should be used of that part of the British people entitled to vote, some 46.5 million in the case of the referendum. From this, the fact should be established that only 17.4 million people expressed a desire to leave the EU. Interviewers should demand explicit acknowledgement of the fact that the majority of the electorate (29.1 million) and consequently of the British people as a whole (49.1 million) expressed no desire to leave.
4. Interviewers should conclude by requiring agreement to the factual summary that it is now for the government to decide what course of action is in the best interest of the British people, including the millions of young people whose lives would be deeply impacted by a matter on which they have had no opportunity to express a view, in the light of the fact that only a minority of the electorate have expressed a desire to leave the EU.
5. On a supplementary point, any attempt to describe the referendum vote as ‘the greatest mandate in our history’ which ‘must be respected’ and to gainsay which would be ‘a betrayal of democracy’ should be countered by the following facts: (a) the history of such specific mandates, i.e. national referendums, amounts to only three; (b) that in two of these, which concerned EU membership, the majority vote approximated to 17.4 million, although the first represented a higher percentage of the electorate; (c) taking general elections into account, the referendum turnout is neither the greatest numerically (1992) nor in percentage terms (1950) – in fact, the percentage turnout for the referendum is slightly below the average for General Elections since 1918.
BBC journalists should keep in the forefront of their mind that the actual betrayal of our democracy is the false narrative that the referendum result is an expression of the will of the British people in favour of Brexit that the government has no choice but to implement – as the facts above show, that claim is untrue in every particular. It must not be allowed to pass unchallenged.
COMPLEAT TROWZER 