It is easy to view
the letter
from 72 MPs criticising the BBC for being biased against Brexit as
just another example of the government putting pressure on the news
organisation. But if that is all it was, it is odd to have another
conservative MP, Nicky Morgan, describe the letter as chilling.
I would argue that
this letter as another example of the fear I talked about in this
post.
Fear by Brexiteers that their little English coup may still unravel.
Their reasons for fearing this are real enough. The original Leave
vote was based on lies and on obscuring the truth. These lies are
perpetuated by those who now feel obliged to advance
the Leave cause. I talked in my last post about how Tim Harford had
recently noted that tobacco firms had managed to delay by decades the response to the
first studies in the early 1950s that smoking was harmful. What
chance, then, did economists have before the referendum? But the lies
told and truths dismissed in the referendum are going to start to
unravel as soon as negotiations begin.
One of the main
initial topics of those negotiations will be how much the UK will
have to pay the EU. Many of those who voted Leave expected it to be
the other way around. For this reason, the UK would like everything
to be discussed together, so that this bad news can be hidden. But
this is not the way the EU likes
to do things, and the negotiations are going to be done the way the
EU dictates. Remember they hold all the cards, because it is the UK
who suffers most with no deal.
This bad news could be avoided if the UK walked away, which is one reason
why the option of no deal is beginning to sound attractive
to the Brexiteers. But the British people do not want this. Here is a
recent poll
that contrasts the popularity of a EEA/Norway option with no deal.
What is described as
‘Hard Brexit’ here is really ‘No Deal Brexit’. The poll says
that as many Conservative voters will be as unhappy with no deal as
they would be with the EEA option. While the full horror
of no deal for the UK economy will take years to manifest itself in
lower GDP, the consequences in terms of firms leaving will be
immediate. David Davis has not modeled the impact of no deal because he already knows the results would be
terrible. [1]
If this is what
people feel when confronted with the truth, the only option left to
the Brexiteers is to try and hide the truth. Little things are all
they ask for from the BBC. Like not mentioning Brexit when talking about rising
inflation, because to do so would be ‘controversial’. To play
down news of firms planning to leave the UK, because that was the
news last week. To not present the view of the EU in negotiations,
because this is like a battle and the BBC must be patriotic. The
Brexiteers hope that with these ‘small modifications’ to
broadcast news, and the pure propaganda from much of the press, they can
get away with a deal that is not in the UK’s interests.
If those pursuing
this agenda do not think the war is over, it would be foolish for
those opposed to leaving the EU to believe it ended with the
triggering of Article 50. The Brexiteers fear that if there is no
deal, MPs in parliament will at last find their voice to say no.
Those opposed to leaving the EU must do all they can to encourage
that possibility.
[1] Among political
commentators, all predictions by economists are assumed to have equal weight, so
even Janan Ganesh writing in the FT can say
“politicians are allowed to question [economists] record of
clairvoyance”. That is not true, because economists’ predictions
are not all alike, as I have explained
many times. One of his favourite politicians, George Osborne, has
said
that Brexit is the “biggest
single act of protectionism in history”. History as well as
economics tells us that protectionism of this kind is invariably
harmful.
