THE BBC AND BREXIT

THE ‘TODAY’ PROGRAMME’S COVERAGE OF THE SALZBURG AND BRUSSELS EUROPEAN COUNCIL MEETINGS, AUTUMN 2018

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

This survey analyses the Today programme’s coverage of the Brexit debate around the important Salzburg and Brussels European Council meetings in autumn, 2018.

Over the 10 days monitored, 148 speakers contributed to Today’s EU coverage. Of these:

 85 were Remain supporters, speaking 22,133 words, or 52% of the total.

 19 supported the Chequers deal1 , with 8,712 words, or 21% of the total.

 26 wanted a decisive Brexit, speaking 7,186 words, or 17% of the total.

 18 guests were neutral, with 4,276 words or 10% of the total.

So the 104 Remain and Chequers supporters together spoke 30,845 words, or 73% of the total, against the 26 clear Brexiteers, who spoke 7,186 words, or 17% of the total.

The programme thus failed to treat fairly the views of those who wanted a decisive break from the EU – as recorded in the referendum vote. It exaggerated the problems of leaving, giving too much airtime to those opposed to a decisive Brexit, and to EU figures who were demanding that the UK should make substantially more compromises in its exit proposals.

This anti-Brexit imbalance was heavily compounded by the ‘judgments’ and opinions of BBC presenters and correspondents, who underlined the alleged negativities to an inordinate extent. The survey illustrates that BBC input of this nature has become a major source of bias. In this period, it was particularly marked in its negativity towards ‘no deal’

News-watch can find only one programme since the referendum which has examined the benefits of Brexit (The ‘Brexit Lab’, Radio 4, 27/3/18). The BBC has never allowed debate as to whether the 1950’s ideas behind the “Project” of European integration are still valid today.

1 In July 2018, the Cabinet convened at Chequers to finalise a white paper on Brexit. This prompted the resignations of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and Brexit Secretary David Davis, who believed the deal would not deliver on the 2016 Leave vote.

2

CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...... 2 PART ONE: MONITORING STATISTICS ...... 4 1.1 POLITICAL BACKGROUND ...... 4 1.2 SURVEY OVERVIEW ...... 5 1.3 AIRTIME ...... 6 1.4 WEEKLY EU COVERAGE ...... 7 1.5 THE SALZBURG EUROPEAN COUNCIL MEETING ...... 8 SPEAKERS ...... 9 WORD COUNTS ...... 9 VIEWPOINTS ...... 9 1.6 BRUSSELS INFORMAL HEADS OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT MEETING ...... 10 SPEAKERS ...... 11 WORD COUNTS ...... 11 KEY VIEWPOINTS ...... 11 KEY VIEWPOINTS – WEEKS ONE AND FIVE COMBINED ...... 12 PART TWO: TRANSCRIPT ANALYSIS ...... 14 THE ‘BREXIT’ DEBATE DEFINED ...... 14 ‘NO DEAL’: PROBLEMS WITH THE REPORTING ‘FRAME’ ...... 16 PROGRAMME ‘FRAME’ SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018 ...... 16 TODAY BREXIT COVERAGE: OVERVIEW ...... 18 NUMERICAL IMBALANCE ...... 19 ANALYSIS: PRO REMAIN PERSPECTIVE ...... 21 BULLETINS ...... 21 APPEARANCES BY THE EU ...... 23 ‘REALITY CHECKING’ ...... 25 GOVERNMENT SPOKESMEN/PERSPECTIVE (INTERVIEWS)...... 26 CONTRIBUTOR ‘REMAIN’ PERSPECTIVE (UK GUESTS) ...... 28 BBC SPECIAL REPORTS ON THE IMPACT OF BREXIT ...... 30 BBC ‘COMMENT’ ...... 37 BUSINESS NEWS ...... 42 ‘NO DEAL’ NEGATIVITY ...... 45 MENTIONS OF ‘NO DEAL’ BY BBC STAFF ...... 57 PRO-BREXIT SUMMARY, TODAY ...... 60 PRO-BREXIT INTERVIEWS ...... 64 ADDITIONAL PRO-BREXIT POINTS FROM PROGRAMME GUESTS: ...... 66 September 17: Rachael Sylvester of the Times claimed that Theresa May was angering Tory MPs because she was not taking back control...... 66 BULLETINS ...... 67 BBC DEVIL’S ADVOCATE QUESTIONS/COMMENT QUERYING REMAIN/EU PERSPECTIVE ...... 68 APPENDIX I: METHODOLOGY ...... 70

3

PART ONE: MONITORING STATISTICS

1.1 POLITICAL BACKGROUND

On 23 June 2016, the UK public voted to leave the European Union by a majority of 52% to 48%. Ten months later, the Conservative government invoked Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, setting in motion a two-year timetable for Brexit talks, with the UK scheduled to leave the EU on 29 March 2019.

On 6 July 2018, the Cabinet convened at the Prime Minister’s country house, Chequers, and finalised a white paper entitled The Future Relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. The white paper covered four areas: economic partnership, security, cooperation and institutional arrangements, and sought to hold the UK in a close relationship with the EU, ‘broader in scope than any other that exists between the EU and a third country’, by way of a new ‘Association Agreement’. Also proposed was a ‘common rulebook’ for state aid, to ensure neither side could subsidise their own industries. The Prime Minister noted that her Chequers proposal would ‘ensure that we leave the EU, without leaving Europe.’

The Brexit Secretary David Davis resigned over the plan on 8 July. The following day, his parliamentary under-secretary, Steve Baker, and the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, also stepped down. Mr Davis, in his resignation letter said:

In my view the inevitable consequence of the proposed policies will be to make the supposed control by Parliament illusory rather than real. As I said at Cabinet, the "common rule book" policy hands control of large swathes of our economy to the EU and is certainly not returning control of our laws in any real sense.

Boris Johnson, in his own resignation letter, stated that, ‘Brexit should be about opportunity and hope’, and ought to maximise the UK’s advantages as an ‘open, outward-looking global economy’, but, he said ‘that dream is dying suffocated by needless self-doubt.’ He suggested that the country appeared to be heading for a ‘semi-Brexit, with large parts of the economy still locked in the EU system, but with no UK control over that system.’

On 19 September 2018, EU heads of state and government gathered in Salzburg for an informal summit. Mrs May insisted that her Chequers plan was the only way forward, but the EU27 reconfirmed their full unity and rejected the Chequers proposals, with European Council President Donald Tusk stating that there would be no Withdrawal Agreement without ‘a solid,

4 operational and legally binding Irish backstop’. This was widely characterised by the British media as a ‘humiliation’ or ‘embarrassing rebuff’ for Theresa May.

After the meeting, Donald Tusk suggested that ‘the moment of truth’ for the Brexit negotiations would be the October European Council, where the EU would decide if an extraordinary summit could be called in November to finalise and formalise a deal.

However, when EU leaders congregated in Brussels on 17 October, there was still an impasse over the question of the Irish border, and no deal was reached. The EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier said that ‘much more time’ was needed to agree a Brexit deal for Britain, and said that negotiations would continue calmly and patiently over the next few weeks.’ Reports at the time suggested that the extraordinary summit scheduled for November had been put ‘on ice’, although, on 25 November a short specially-convened meeting of the EU27 endorsed the terms of the UK's withdrawal.

1.2 SURVEY OVERVIEW

Today is BBC Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme. It broadcasts for three hours on weekday mornings, and for two hours on Saturdays. Today has a weekly reach of approximately 7 million listeners2, and each programme is available ‘on demand’ through BBC iPlayer, for a month after broadcast.

News-watch monitored and logged every edition of Today between 17 September and 20 October, a period of five weeks or 30 editions. Detailed monitoring was undertaken for the weeks of the European Council meeting in Salzburg (17-22 September) and the Informal Meeting of Heads of State and Government in Brussels (15-20 October). This involved the full transcription of all reports pertaining to Brexit or the UK’s relationship with the European Union, as well as the analysis of these transcripts both quantitatively and qualitatively. Information was collated in News-watch’s bespoke database to enable comparisons with programme data collected during previous surveys dating back to 1999. A more detailed explanation of News- watch’s methodology is presented as Appendix I.

2 https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2018/q3-rajar 5

1.3 AIRTIME

News-watch bases its airtime calculations on Today’s ‘features’: interviews, correspondent reports and two-way discussions between presenters and journalists that account for approximately two thirds of Today’s total weekly airtime. This focus ensures that airtime calculations are not distorted by repeated content or ‘non-news’ elements.3

During the five weeks of the Autumn 2018 survey, Today aired 54 hours and 55 minutes of feature items. Of this, 16 hours and 7 minutes (29.3% of available airtime) was EU-related, and almost all EU content was specifically focused on Brexit.

Since 1999, News-watch has monitored, tracked and analysed 358 full weeks of the Today programme, equating 2148 individual editions with a combined airtime of 6086 hours. This long- term monitoring has established that Today has, on average, devoted 7.3% of its ‘feature’ output to the discussion of EU themes. The Autumn 2018 survey saw EU coverage at 29.3% - four times the long-term average. The table provides details of the 29 News-watch surveys of Today undertaken between September 2002 and October 2018.4

Survey Date Weeks Total Airtime EU Airtime Proportion of (minutes) (minutes) EU coverage

1 September 2002 – July 2003 47 31,255 1750 5.6% 2 September – December 2003 12 7,980 455 5.7% 3 March – June 2004 13 8,216 871 9.8% 4 October – December 2004 10 6,650 365 5.5% 5 March – June 2005 15 9,975 1082 10.8% 6 October – December 2005 9 5,985 489 8.2% 7 February – June 2006 16 10,640 437 4.1% 8 September – December 2006 14 9,310 275 2.9% 9 March – June 2007 14 9,310 326 3.5% 10 September – December 2007 14 9,310 386 4.1% 11 March – June 2008 12 7,980 263 3.3% 12 September – December 2008 14 9,310 384 4.1% 13 April – June 2009 6 4,206 228 5.4% 14 September – December 2009 13 8,577 442 5.1% 15 March – May 2010 6 3,961 245 6.2% 16 September – December 2010 13 8,493 444 5.2% 17 March – June 2011 13 8,617 532 6.2% 18 October – December 2011 11 7,298 1639 22.5% 19 April – June 2012 12 7,9,38 1112 14.0% 20 September – December 2012 13 8,640 540 6.2% 21 April – June 2013 12 7,929 538 6.8% 22 September – December 2013 14 9,207 470 5.1% 23 April – June 2014 6 3,979 412 10.3% 24 March – May 2015 6 3,990 252 6.1% 25 June – December 2016 (Business Slots only) 26 n/a 759 n/a 26 March – Apr 2017 1 667 305 46%

3 Repeated content can include bulletins and newspaper review segments; non-news components are sports reports, weather forecasts and trailers for other BBC programmes. 4 A number of these surveys, particularly during election periods, included multi-programme monitoring. For the purposes of this survey, information pertaining solely to the Today programme has been isolated to allow direct comparisons. 6

27 May – June 2017 5 3,433 542 15.9% 28 October – November 2017 4 2,660 451 16.9% 29 September- October 2018 5 3295 967 29.3%

The graph presents the EU airtime proportions in the 29 most recent Today surveys, listed by end date.5

Proportion of EU Coverage on Radio 4's Today Programme 2002 - 2018 50% 45% 40% 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5%

0%

Jul '03 Jul

Jun Jun '04 Jun '05 Jun '06 Jun '07 Jun '08 Jun '09 Jun '11 Jun '12 Jun '13 Jun '14 Jun '17

Oct Oct '17

Dec '03 Dec Dec '04 Dec '05 Dec '06 Dec '07 Dec '08 Dec '09 Dec '10 Dec '11 Dec '12 Dec '13 Dec '17 Apr

Nov '17 Nov May '15 May May '09 May

As the chart shows, the proportion of Today’s EU coverage in the five-week Winter 2018 survey was the second highest of all News-watch projects. Greater proportions of EU coverage were only recorded during an atypically short one-week survey undertaken in March/April 2017, where monitoring was timed to coincide with the triggering of Article 50, in which 46% of Today’s feature airtime focused on the EU or Brexit.

1.4 WEEKLY EU COVERAGE

The weekly amount of EU/Brexit coverage varied over the survey interval, with coverage highest during the first and last weeks of the survey, in which the Salzburg and Brussels meetings were held.

5 Airtime calculations are unavailable for Survey 25 (June – December 2016) which focused on six months of the programme’s Business News slots in the period immediately post-referendum, and did not monitor Today in its entirety. 7

EU COVERAGE BY WEEK - WINTER 2018 SURVEY

300

250

200

150 Minutes

100

50

0 1 2 3 4 5 Week

In Week One (Salzburg meeting) Today broadcast 4 hours 35 minutes of EU coverage (41% of available feature airtime). In Week Five (Brussels meeting) Today broadcast 3 hours 31 minutes of EU coverage (31.9% of available airtime).

The following sections analyse Week One and Five in detail, using data gathered from the full transcripts.

1.5 THE SALZBURG EUROPEAN COUNCIL MEETING

Today transmitted 87 EU-related programme items during the week of the Salzburg European Council meeting. There were 11 bulletin items, 23 mentions of Brexit in the newspaper review segments, and 53 ‘feature’ reports with a total duration of 275 minutes. In addition, Brexit or EU were mentioned in passing on three occasions and appeared once as a theme in Thought for the Day. The average length of a Brexit/EU feature item was 5 minutes 11 seconds.

All EU features broadcast during the weeklong interval were coded according to their primary theme. Brexit was by far the most widely-discussed EU issue: Only 3 of the 53 feature items focused predominantly on non-Brexit EU issues.6 As such, 268 minutes (97.4%) of Today’s EU coverage was focused squarely on Brexit or the Salzburg summit itself.

6 On 20 September at 6.45am, a report by Martha Kearney looked at populist parties in the rest of the EU, although the package also referenced Brexit. In the same programme, at 7.13am, Labour’s Tom Watson mentioned briefly the work of Labour MEPs who he believed had been responsible for a lot of social progress. And on 22 September at 8.49am Martha Kearney asked a question about a journalist in Malta killed by a car bomb and asked if there should be any action from the EU, before it being pointed out by her guest that the European Convention on Human Rights is linked to the Council of Europe, rather than the EU. 8

SPEAKERS

74 guest speakers were invited onto the programme to discuss Brexit/EU matters during the week of the Salzburg European Council. There were 43 interviews and 31 soundbites, totalling 23,954 words. Each contributor was coded according to their viewpoints on Brexit or the EU. Although the positions adopted by some guests during the June 2016 Referendum were taken into consideration (and indeed, these prior positions were often referred to within the interviews themselves), categorisation was not based solely upon whether speakers had voted Leave or Remain in 2016: in News-watch’s methodology the contents of each contribution has always been the key determinant.

47 speakers (64%) were broadly pro-EU, offered a negative opinion on Brexit, or pushed for a ‘soft’ Brexit, including the UK remaining part of the customs union, single market, or opposed a ‘no deal’ scenario in the Brexit negotiations.

21 speakers (28%) were broadly anti-EU, or offered a positive opinion on Brexit. These included some speakers who had supported Remain in the referendum.

6 speakers (8%) offered a neutral, factual or mixed view on the EU/Brexit.

Of the 21 speakers who were in favour of Brexit, only 10 were ‘firm’ withdrawalists, in that they had actively campaigned for the UK to leave the EU during the 2016 referendum. As such, this cohort of speakers accounted for 13.5% of appearances during the week of the Salzburg Summit.

WORD COUNTS

The 74 guest speakers who appeared on Today during the week of the Salzburg European Council meeting delivered 23,954 words in total.

13,182 words (55%) were from Pro-EU or Anti-Brexit speakers 9,101 words (38%) were from Anti-EU or Pro-Brexit speakers 1,671 words (7%) were from speakers who offered a neutral, factual or mixed view

VIEWPOINTS

Given the narrow thematic range of coverage, it was possible during this survey to divide contributors into five more detailed categories, based on the specific position they were taking on the Brexit negotiations. (For a more detailed explanation, see Part 2). These were: The EU position; the ‘Remain’ perspective; supporters of the Chequers plan; and the ‘Brexiteer’ perspective. The Chart and table show the word counts allocated to each category: 9

Words During the Week of the Salzburg Summit 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0 EU ‘Remain’ Chequers Brexiteer Neutral/Factual

Number of Guests Words % EU 16 3,917 16% ‘Remain’ 29 8,536 36% Chequers 11 5,127 21% ‘Brexiteer’ 12 4,703 20% Neutral/Factual 6 1,671 7% Total 74 23,954 100%

As the data shows, by far the most prominent category was that of ‘Remain’, with over a third of the available space being allocated to speakers from this category. Only a fifth of the airtime was given over to those who spoke from a firm ‘Brexiteer’ perspective.

1.6 BRUSSELS INFORMAL HEADS OF STATE AND GOVERNMENT MEETING

Today transmitted 73 EU-related programme items during the week of the Brussels European Council meeting. There were 15 bulletin items, 16 mentions of Brexit in the newspaper review segments, and 42 ‘feature’ reports with a total duration of 211 minutes and 15 seconds. In addition, Brexit or EU were mentioned in passing on six occasions. The average length of a Brexit/EU feature item was 5 minutes 2 seconds.

All EU features broadcast during the weeklong interval were coded according to their primary theme. Brexit was by far the most widely-discussed EU issue: Only 1 of the 42 feature items

10 focused on non-Brexit EU issues.7 As such, 208 minutes and 45 seconds, or 98.8% of Today’s EU coverage was focused squarely on Brexit or the Brussels meeting.

SPEAKERS

74 guest speakers were invited onto the programme to discuss Brexit/EU matters during the week of the Brussels meeting. There were 29 interviews and 45 soundbites, totalling 18,353 words. Each contributor was coded according to their viewpoints on Brexit or the EU. As outlined in the previous section, News-watch’s methodology the actual contents of the contributions has always been the key determinant.

40 speakers (54%) were broadly pro-EU, offered a negative opinion on Brexit, or pushed for a ‘soft’ Brexit, including remaining part of the customs union, single market, or opposed a ‘no deal’ scenario in the Brexit negotiations.

21 speakers (28%) were broadly anti-EU, or offered a positive opinion on Brexit. These included some speakers who had supported Remain in the referendum.

13 speakers (18%) offered a neutral, factual or mixed view on the EU/Brexit.

Of the 23 speakers who spoke in favour of Brexit, 11 were ‘firm’ withdrawalists, in that they had actively campaigned for the UK to leave the EU during the 2016 referendum. As such, this cohort of speakers accounted for 15% of appearances during the week of the Brussels Summit.

WORD COUNTS

The 74 guest speakers invited onto Today during the week of the Brussels meeting delivered 18,353 words in total.

9,680 words (53%) were from Pro-EU or Anti-Brexit speakers 5,645 words (31%) were from Anti-EU or Pro-Brexit speakers 3,028 words (16%) were from speakers who offered a neutral, factual or mixed view

KEY VIEWPOINTS

As in Week One, the coverage’s continued narrow thematic range meant that it was possible to divide contributors into distinct categories based on the position they were taking on the negotiations. The Chart and table show the word counts allocated to each category:

7 On 18 October at 7.16am, an interview with Pascal Saint-Amans head of tax policy at the OECD focused for two and a half minutes on European Commission plans to introduce a digital sales tax 11

Words during the week of the Brussels Summit 6,000

5,000

4,000

3,000

2,000

1,000

0 EU ‘Remain’ Chequers Brexiteer Neutral/Factual

Number of Guests Words % EU 14 4,331 24% ‘Remain’ 26 5,349 29% Chequers 8 3,585 20% ‘Brexiteer’ 14 2,483 13% Neutral/Factual 12 2,605 14% Total 74 18,353 100%

Again, as with the week of the Salzburg summit, speakers in the ‘Remain’ category were allocated the most airtime by Today’s editors. Week Five of the survey saw a marked increase in the space awarded to EU contributors when compared to Week One, and a decline in firm ‘Brexiteers’ who received just 13% of the airtime.

KEY VIEWPOINTS – WEEKS ONE AND FIVE COMBINED

The table amalgamates the data gathered during the two weeks of detailed monitoring to assess the amount of space alloted to each of the five identified viewpoints.

12

Total Words during Weeks One and Five (combined) 16,000

14,000

12,000

10,000

8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

0 EU ‘Remain’ Chequers ‘Brexiteer' Neutral/Factual

Number of Guests Words % EU 30 8,248 19% ‘Remain’ 55 13,885 33% Chequers 19 8,712 21% ‘Brexiteer’ 26 7,186 17% Neutral/Factual 18 4,276 10% Total 148 42,307 100%

As the data shows, across the two weeks of the survey in which detailed monitoring was undertaken, the ‘Remain’ perspective dominated, and of the four key viewpoints (excluding those contributors who spoke neutrally or factually) the ‘Brexiteer’ view – arguably the closest to the majority view as expressed in the 2016 referendum – was given the lowest amount of space: just 17%.

13

PART TWO: TRANSCRIPT ANALYSIS

THE ‘BREXIT’ DEBATE DEFINED

By the time of this survey, the debate about Brexit had moved a long way away from simple Leave, as was on the referendum ballot paper and endorsed in the results. Nor was support for a close continued relationship with the EU a simple equation; multiple possibilities were being considered. There were those who wanted the UK to halt the Brexit process, to avoid what was dubbed ‘no deal’ by any means possible, and for the UK to continue its EU membership. Others wanted a second referendum or, rather, what they termed a ‘People’s Vote’ usually because they alleged that the Vote Leave campaign did not include any clear definition of the terms of the UK’s departure. Another major strand of opinion which had evolved, and was extensively aired on the Today programme (by both contributors and BBC staff), was that economic ‘experts’ believed that Brexit would damage the trade between the UK and the EU and so the UK had to remain within, or have continued access to, the EU’s trading structures or a close equivalent.

In the referendum context and for some time afterwards, Leave was defined by David Cameron and Theresa May (for example, in her Lancaster House speech) – along with most who wanted a decisive split with the EU – as leaving the customs union, the single market and the jurisdiction of the ECJ, and the UK being able to make trade deals on its own terms. But during the course of 2018, and especially from the time of the Cabinet’s Chequers meeting, it became increasingly clear that Mrs May and her government were negotiating a form of leave agreement which did not clearly incorporate these earlier objectives. Instead, she seemed to be pursuing future arrangements with the EU which included, for a limited period at least, the UK remaining in the single market and customs union without a clear exit plan, and also, in consequence, accepting to a large extent and for an undefined period the continued jurisdiction of the ECJ. Mrs May claimed that her approach was still about delivering ‘Brexit’, but, many believed that at best, this had transformed into an extremely conditional set of arrangements close to what many who favoured Remain also wanted8.

Those in Parliament who wanted ‘Brexit’ as originally defined – primarily up to approximately 100 Conservative MPs, plus the DUP and a few Labour MPs – were vociferous in their opposition to the May approach to negotiations throughout the summer and into autumn and said increasingly that it was a betrayal of her Lancaster House speech and the 2016 vote. They also

8 These were crystallised by the Spectator in November to a 40-point analysis of why Mrs May’s approach did not amount to Brexit: https: //blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/the-top-40-horrors-lurking-in-the-small-print-of-theresa-mays-brexit-deal/ 14 maintained that ‘no deal’ – or adoption of a WTO trading framework would be preferable to the compromises being made.

The bulk of other MPs appeared, at best, ambivalent about the way forward. Many Conservatives – those not mentioned above – seemed to back the government’s emerging ‘deal’. The majority of those in the Labour party were stipulating that, if their party was in government, a deal could be negotiated with the EU which was ‘Brexit’ but involved the UK staying in the single market and customs union and not being subject to the jurisdiction of the ECJ. Some in the Labour party also wanted a People’s Vote, though the terms of this were not been precisely mapped out and it was not clear whether or not this was party policy. The SNP and the Liberal Democrats maintained their stance of rejecting the need for Brexit, and, in effect, wanted to stay in the EU.

Overall, the debate in Parliament was thus multi-layered and complex, but boiled down to that the majority of MPs wanted arrangements with the EU which included continued participation in the single market and customs union. They were thus at odds with what was said by the Leave campaign during the referendum campaign and also with David Cameron’s and Theresa May’s initial explanations of what Brexit would entail.

Britain is a representative democracy, meaning that MPs are normally entitled to follow their own interpretation of their constituents’ views. But through the EU referendum, a direct mandate was delivered to Parliament to ensure that Britain left the EU.

What were the BBC’s obligations towards impartiality in this context? Coverage could not be simply binary towards Leave and Remain. The obligation was to reflect the diverse opinions involved. There was a special necessity – in that Parliament appeared to be ambivalent about its intentions – to ensure that the wishes of the majority Leave vote was given full consideration and exposure in coverage. The editorial imperative was also to subject to rigorous scrutiny those who were seeking inside and outside Parliament and in the EU to ignore or dilute the referendum vote.

The evidence of this survey is that the Corporation ignored and heavily distorted its obligations. Instead, it focused most instead on broadcasting the pro-EU/Remain/Chequers perspective. In its flagship news and current affairs programme, BBC staff paid disproportionate attention to the alleged complexities of unpicking the UK/EU relationship, while not exploring the potential of a decisive break with the EU Treaties. Put another way, in the analysis which follows, it is sharply clear that the Today programme’s main axis of exploration and coverage seriously under-reported and often ignored the views of those who voted for, and continue support the referendum ballot paper’s Leave option. 15

‘NO DEAL’: PROBLEMS WITH THE REPORTING ‘FRAME’

News-watch has explained in previous reports that media academics have demonstrated that the over-simplistic linguistic ‘framing’ of the coverage of important matters of controversy can be the root cause of serious journalistic deficiencies. As Robert M. Entman described in a landmark paper on this topic9, the ‘framing’ of complex subjects for audiences can generate inherent bias which is compounded by repetition. He describes framing as follows:

‘. . . . a process involving ‘selection’ and ‘salience’. . . ‘making a piece of information more noticeable, meaningful or memorable to audiences’.’

Substantial evidence and analysis of the negativity created by the BBC’s use of the word ‘divorce’ to label the likely outcome of the Brexit process during the autumn of 2017 was presented in a survey by News-watch of the Today programme’s EU coverage10.

The survey concluded:

‘This case study demonstrates – on this major matter of public policy, with the potential to affect the lives of every UK citizen, and at a crucial point in the narrative – Today not only under- represented a significant strand of thought, but negated it entirely. Through editorial choices and the selection and omission of particular guests, along with the repetition of a rhetorical frame which reinforced a particular outcome, Today’s coverage suggested a consensus existed both politically and within the country at large, when this clearly wasn’t the case11.’

PROGRAMME ‘FRAME’ SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018

The steps towards Brexit in this monitoring period – as Brexit-related negotiations continued at so-called EU ‘summits’ (EU council meetings) in Salzburg and Brussels – were framed by Today in a fundamentally flawed and deeply biased way.

As already indicated, particularly problematic was the multi-pronged projection by Today of ‘no deal’ as an outcome to be avoided at all costs.

9 Framing: Towards clarification of a fractured paradigm by Robert M. Entman https://is.muni.cz/el/1423/podzim2018/POL256/um/Entman_1993_FramingTowardclarificationOfAFracturedParadigm.pdf 10 P51 et sequi http://news-watch.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/News-watch-Winter-2017-Survey.pdf 11 Ibid p63

16

Numerous programme contributors, including EU leaders, supporters of Chequers, and those who wanted a People’s Vote were of this opinion. Their points of view were strongly represented on the programme, and are detailed in terms of what was said on air in section 2 below, as well as in Section 1 in the speaker categorisation. More than 20 programme guests mentioned ‘no deal’ in derogatory terms. They were given abundant airtime and seldom challenged about their views.

This pervasive ‘no deal’ negativity was strongly reinforced because it was also emphasised in the programme news bulletins, and by numerous comments from a range of BBC presenters and correspondents. Their views on this topic were mostly partisan in conveying the undesirability of Brexit on such terms. Typical examples were comments expressed by Europe editor Laura Kuenssberg and Katya Adler. The latter declared baldly that all EU trade agreements and airline safety agreements would be ‘compromised’ by ‘no deal’. Ms Kuenssberg surmised that the impact of ‘no deal’ would be total chaos. Presenter Nick Robinson described leaving without an EU agreement as the ‘cliff edge of no deal’. Also included during the survey period were a number of special features designed and tightly edited to project dire ‘no deal’ consequences, such as food shortages and major disruption of port traffic.

By way of balance, there were some appearances of figures who believed that at the point of Brexit, the adoption of WTO rules would be better for the UK than to accept either the Chequers deal. But those who specifically said so could be counted on one hand.

The numerical discrepancy was magnified by that, in contrast to the frequent efforts to explore the alleged negative problems of ‘no deal’, there was no equivalent editorial attempt by Today to look at the perceived advantages of trading in the framework of WTO rules. And there appeared to be only very limited awareness by BBC staff that ‘no deal’ was perceived by those who wanted a decisive Brexit as a contrived and deliberately derogatory phrase which was also associated with terms such as ‘cliff-edge’ and ‘catastrophe’.

Presenters and correspondents on rare occasions suggested in devil’s advocate questions or points in reports that there was support for ‘no deal’ but their efforts in that direction were much rarer than the attention they paid to amplifying ‘no deal’ complexity and negativity.

In summary, Today regularly used during the survey period the phrase ‘no deal’ to describe the process of leaving the EU without agreement, and, in that context, allowed a wide range of contributors to describe the prospect – with virtually no challenge – as an extremely undesirable outcome which would lead to major disruption of trade and economic decline.

17

The framing of ‘no deal’ in this way generated coverage at odds with the BBC Charter requirement of impartiality, and directly created substantial bias by conveying the impression that virtually all parties in the Brexit equation wanted to avoid a Brexit which led to the UK trading in accordance with WTO rules. Put another way, Today – through the adoption of this particular ‘frame’ as a cornerstone of their EU coverage – seriously under-reported the views of those who wanted a more decisive Brexit, as voted for in the referendum, than that being devised during this period by the British government and the EU.

TODAY BREXIT COVERAGE: OVERVIEW

What follows are sections which illustrate the extent of coverage of the unfolding Brexit debate and negotiations on the lines spelled out above. They show that, by a large margin, the Leave and so-called ’no deal’ perspectives were under-reported, while the views of those supporting the Chequers approach, or the continuation of a closer relationship with the EU, were much more strongly represented.

What were the key areas of editorial exploration?

The EU’s opinions were eagerly and frequently sought. EU interviewees called for a second referendum; said Brexit was a mistake; warned that ‘no deal’ would be a disaster; that access to the EU’s trading arrangements was dependent on participants’ acceptance of the EU’s so called ‘four freedoms’; that the Northern Ireland arrangements proposed by the EU were non- negotiable and essential to preserve peace; and that significantly more compromises must be made by the UK. Although these views were deeply controversial to those who wanted Leave on clear terms, the transcripts show that EU figures who espoused them were not rigorously challenged. Nor was there any programme effort to investigate whether the EU itself had structural problems which could mean – for example – that staying in the single market was not a good option for the UK.

The Chequers perspective was heavily reported, as would be expected, through abundant correspondent comment and eight interviews with various spokespersons for the government, including the Prime Minister herself. These figures posited in various ways – and were afforded considerable space to do so – that the government’s approach to ‘Brexit’ was the only practical solution, and they rejected alternatives such as the adoption of WTO trading frameworks. Some elements of what was said were challenged by Today presenters, and bulletins also made clear that there was opposition in Parliament to the government approach. But the more decisive Leave perspective was not rigorously put to them, and the main emphasis of Today was rather to

18 suggest to interviewees that their stance would not meet with EU approval, and that further compromise towards what the EU wanted was necessary.

Another important component of the coverage was the approach adopted by BBC presenters and correspondents. Their overall contribution was substantial and was emphatically not neutral. Occasionally during the survey period, BBC figures adopted a devil’s advocate approach to those who did not support a ‘clean’ Brexit or wanted greater compromises with the EU, or continued membership. But mostly, they accepted what was said at face value by those who favoured a strong continued EU relationship. This anti-Leave negativity was buttressed by the attitudes to ‘no deal’ already outlined above. BBC staff heavily conveyed that this was a Brexit outcome to be avoided at all costs. Input from the so-called BBC Reality Check unit – projected as an objective arbiter of ‘the facts’ relating to Brexit – was also in reality deeply partisan in favouring the EU’s stance towards issues such as the Northern Ireland backstop.

As has already been discussed above, but of central importance in this context, a topic area not covered adequately included whether ‘no deal’, or more specifically, whether a Brexit which led to the adoption of WTO trading rules, would be as negative as its opponents projected. Alternative solutions to the Northern Ireland border other than those proposed in the Chequers/EU axis were also not explored. This amounted in both areas to major bias by omission.

By contrast, the perspective of those who wanted a People’s Vote was aired frequently and packages were commissioned to illustrate the potential scale of Brexit difficulties.

There was no effort to explore alternatives to what the EU and the government were proposing. Whilst obviously the programme had to cover the EU negotiations from the perspective of the government agenda, the decisively Leave options went unreported. This was typified in the interview with Singapore’s Prime Minister by Martha Kearney. He was clearly prepared to offer a separate trade arrangement to the UK outside the EU, but he was not asked anything about how it would operate. He was asked if he would prefer the UK to stay in the EU, and he answered affirmatively.

NUMERICAL IMBALANCE

A striking feature of the coverage was a large numerical imbalance towards those who favoured continued close ties with the EU or the Chequers approach towards Brexit. Of course, impartiality in journalism cannot be measured only through analysis of quantitative data, but the allocation of airtime by programme editors does give important pointers to the key issues of coverage. 19

As is outlined in section 1, there were 74 guest contributors during the week of the Brussels meeting, of whom 47 (64 per cent) were supporters of the EU, of Remain, or staying in the customs union and single market (Labour’s position and the Chequers proposals). Just 21 (28 per cent) were broadly anti-EU and/or sympathetic to Brexit. There was thus a ratio of more than 2:1 of guest contributions in favour of the pro-EU perspective.12

The word counts of contributions in week one, that of the Salzburg summit, are 3,917 words were about the EU perspective; 8,536 favoured Remain or were pro-EU; 5,127 were in support of the Chequers/Theresa May approach to the negotiations; and only 4,703 were clearly in favour of Brexit.

Put another way, 17,580 words were from those who supported a strong continued relationship with the EU, against only 4,703 who clearly opposed such an outcome, a ratio of 7:2. Even if the Chequers/government approach is removed from the equation, the count of pro-EU/Remain to those in favour of a more decisive Brexit from Chequers was 12,453 to 4,703, the ratio is 5:2.

In week two, that of the Brussels summit, of the 74 guest contributions, 14 advocated the EU perspective, 24 the Remain one, seven supported the Chequers deal, and 14 were from the decisive Brexit perspective. That adds up to 45 in favour of the first three options, a ratio of 3:1.13

Word counts were: 4,331 (24 per cent) came from those who conveyed the direct EU perspective; 5,349 (29 per cent) from those supporting Remain or a second referendum; 3,585 (20 per cent) were from speakers who favoured a Chequers-style deal, and 2,483 (17.4 per cent) came from guests who wanted Leave more definitively. With Chequers removed, those seeking a closer relationship than Chequers outnumbered those desiring a clean Brexit by almost 4:1.

Thus, the overall picture in the two weeks was that there were 30 EU-supporting speakers who delivered 8,248 words (19 per cent of the total words spoken); 55 who were Remain supporters, who delivered 13,885 words (33 per cent); 19 who were advocates of the Chequers deal who spoke 8,712 words (21 per cent) and 27 Brexit-supporting speakers who delivered 7,186 words (17 per cent).14

12 6 guests provided a neutral or factual contribution, representing 8% of contributors 13 13 guests provided a neutral or factual contribution, representing18% of contributors 14 There were 19 guests who provided neutral or factual contributions, amounting to 13% of contributors 20

Starkly, those who wanted a decisive Brexit which involved the unqualified ending of free movement, departure from the single market and customs union, and the ending of ECJ involvement in British courts (which, as already noted above, many believed the Chequers deal would not achieve) were overwhelmingly outnumbered; these figures delivered only 19.9 per cent of the word count and speaker ratio was 91-30 against them, worse than 3:1.

ANALYSIS: PRO REMAIN PERSPECTIVE

As already noted, the majority of the EU coverage was aimed at confirming and underlining that the Brexit negotiations were heavily fraught. It presented the EU’s perspective with little challenge and suggested that ‘no deal’ was a cliff-edge which would have catastrophic consequences, and that the Northern Ireland border issues were only capable of solution through convoluted compromise with the EU.

What follows is a dissection of the pro-Remain, pro-EU, coverage into its component parts.

BULLETINS

In keeping with the overall tone, the Today bulletins stressed strongly how complex and difficult the Brexit negotiations were, especially over the Irish border issue. It was also frequently stressed that there were dire perils, including the possibility of food shortages and escalating prices, if there was ‘no deal’. The bulletins also highlighted stories which suggested that there was strong and growing support for a second referendum. There was also effort to show that EU leaders were adamant that their approach to the talks was correct, and the UK needed to compromise more.

By contrast, there were no bulletin items which suggested that ‘no deal’ could lead to positive outcomes for the UK. An example of a Today-generated item that could have fallen into this category – but was ignored in bulletin terms – was the Prime Minister of Singapore’s revelation that he was keen to reach a free trade deal with the UK post-Brexit, on top of the trading agreement his country had struck with the EU.

As is mentioned in the pro-Brexit analysis section, this perspective was included in bulletins only marginally. Mentions included that figures such as Boris Johnson and David Davis were opposed to the Chequers plan and could attempt to vote it down; that ‘Brexiteers’ believed the EU was angling for an agreement which would see Northern Ireland being annexed by the EU; and that the DUP was threatening to paralyse government business

21 because it was unhappy about the Northern Ireland proposals. But these points were emphatically secondary.

In summary, the EU-related bulletin items were:

Theresa May was determined to defend her Chequers plan and an Institute for Government report said ‘no deal’ would have serious consequences(17/9); the IMF had warned that the UK would be damaged by any Brexit, and Vince Cable had joined with Dominic Grieve to call for a People’s Vote (18/9); Michel Barnier had said that the EU’s plans involved keeping Northern Ireland in the customs union and single market, and it was also reported that campaigners for a second referendum were continuing to push their case (19/9); two prime ministers among the EU leaders had said they wanted the UK to hold a second referendum and privately regretted Brexit. Nicola Sturgeon had said that the UK should avoid a Brexit ‘cliff-edge’ and wanted delay because the current path was ‘reckless’ (20/9); it had been hoped that Salzburg would ‘soften’ differences between the UK and the EU, but now it seemed they were more entrenched (21/9): Donald Tusk had defended the EU’s approach to the Salzburg summit and had claimed it was Theresa May who had been uncompromising (22/9).

Laura Kuenssberg observed that discord in the Conservative party was continuing as the EU and UK continued to be at odds over the Northern Ireland border. In the 8am bulletin, Norman Smith expanded on the Northern Ireland problems and said it was believed the EU had reverted to that the province would stay in the customs union and single market, amounting to what some believed was ‘annexation’. He said that Sinn Fein had called the DUP resistance to the EU an ‘utter disgrace’ (15/10); Theresa May would address European leaders in Brussels with talks deadlocked and EU leaders ‘expressing pessimism’. Tony Blair, Michael Heseltine and Nick Clegg had called for another referendum on the UK’s EU membership (17/10); Laura Kuenssberg suggested that the two ideas being flirted with by Mrs May, including the further extension, made it more difficult to win party approval at home. Also difficult was that MPs would not be able to amend the motion about the deal. It was also reported that ‘senior Conservative’ Dominic Grieve was among those likely to object to the parliamentary vote process. There was a quote from Mr Grieve to that effect. Kevin Connolly reported that the next EU ‘summit’, planned for November, had been cancelled. It was also reported that Nick Boles was pushing for the EFTA (‘Norway’) option for Brexit (18/10); it was said that the Scottish Secretary was seeking assurances about fishing policy post Brexit, and that Stena, the shipping company had warned that a ‘no deal’ Brexit could hit food supplies in the UK and diminish overall trade (19/10).

22

APPEARANCES BY THE EU

The opinions of senior EU figures were regularly included in the output. There were 30 such contributions, adding up to almost 20 per cent of guest airtime. This was main component in the output being heavily skewed towards the EU perspective and the associated demands for further compromise from the UK. Nothing was said by these contributors which was critical of the EU, and in the extracts broadcast (which were recorded) they overwhelmingly sought to defend the EU approach to the Brexit negotiations. Prominent was their defence of the EU’s perspective on issues such as the single market and free movement. They also warned in different ways that unless the UK was prepared to compromise – on both Theresa May’s ‘Chequers’ proposals, on Northern Ireland and towards avoiding ‘no deal’ – there would be negative consequences for the UK. Some who BBC correspondents spoke to also wanted a reversal of the Brexit process and claimed the vote had been a mistake. A spokesman for the French En Marche party, expressly stated that the British people had been lied to about what Brexit would achieve, and thus claimed that the Leave vote was wrong- headed.

By contrast, there were no appearances by anyone within the EU orbit – such as MEPs from the opposition parties in the EU countries or other countries in Europe – who expressed a different approach to the EU negotiating stance or whose views on Brexit differed from those of the EU leaders.

The points made by EU figures were:

September 17: An Austrian government spokesman warned about the negative impact of ‘no deal’.

September 18: Baiba Braze, Latvia’s ambassador to the UK, said that free movement was fundamental to the EU.

September 19: Georgis Katrougalos, the Greek Europe minister, said the UK had not moved on its proposals enough and claimed the country derived substantial benefits from EU money. Guglielmo Picchi, the Italian minister of foreign affairs, said a ‘blind’ Brexit should not happen, the transition should be up to three years.

September 20: Andrej Babis, the Czech prime minister, said he wanted a second UK referendum because people would now have changed their minds, and the impact on trade had not been known at the time of the first one. Xavier Bettel, prime minister of Luxembourg, said it was hoped a better deal than the Chequers plan would be found and ‘no deal’ would be catastrophic.

23

Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, said there was a need to defend the rights of EU citizens living in the UK, and that it was impossible in the trade context, to divide the four freedoms. The EU also needed to ‘defend’ the Irish border and the Irish Republic to protect the agrifood sector. Peter Pellegrini, the Slovak prime minister, said compromises were vital, and the Polish prime minster said that a hard Brexit would not be good for the UK. Joseph Muscat, the Maltese prime minister, wanted Theresa May to stay in the single market and accept the four freedoms. He said that a second referendum was needed so that people could see what had been negotiated.

September 21: Bruno Bonnell, of En Marche, said that people had been lied to about what Brexit would entail and achieve, and said that Emmanuel Macron was pushing that a hard Brexit was not the right choice. He wanted Article 50 to be delayed.

September 22: Witold Waszczykowski, a former Polish foreign minister, said he wanted as strong as ties as possible with the UK but without hampering the single market. Jean-Claude Piris, the former head of the EU legal service, said the single market could not be put in jeopardy. Mr Piris said it was not possible for the UK to be part of the single market without having all the obligations, including recognising the supremacy of EU law.

October 16: Michael Roth, the German Europe minister, said ‘no deal’ had to be planned for and said things were at a very difficult stage. These were not cattle market negotiations and the UK was finding it very hard to accept that the integrity of the single market was immensely important. The EU would not be blackmailed into accepting a solution to the Irish border.

October 17: Raffaele Trombetta, the Italian ambassador to the UK, said there was a wish to achieve progress, but the problem was that the EU ecosystem included the four freedoms and these had to be included in any deal. Simon Coveney, the Irish deputy prime minister, said the prospect of no deal was very concerning but claimed there had been progress. He also claimed the Irish backstop would not actually be activated – it was an ‘insurance’ mechanism – and insisted that the EU was not expecting Northern Ireland to separate from the UK. But he said that the UK had responsibilities to make sure there was not a hard border and the peace process was protected. He added that ‘no deal’ would create significant multiple problems and the backstop provision was needed to protect against that.

October 18: Xavier Bettel, the Luxembourg prime minister, said that another year might be needed for backstops or double backstops. President of the European Parliament Antonio Tanjani said he wanted to be optimistic and the body language was more positive. Helen McEntee, Ireland’s Europe minister, claimed the transition phase was not an attempt to hold the UK to ransom but an extension to make sure issues could be dealt with. She would not be drawn 24 on the costs of the transition period. Martha Kearney prefaced her interview of Alexandre Holroyd of En Marche by noting that many businesses had warned that the UK leaving with ‘no deal’ could cause immense problems. Mr Holroyd confirmed that enabling legislation relating to ‘no deal’ had been brought forward as a precaution. Xavier Bettel said that divorces were not easy and compromises should be made on both sides, though the EU rules could not be changed to accommodate the UK. Ales Chmelai, the Czech Europe minister, accepted that some progress had been made, but other measures than the extension period were needed to solve the Irish problem. ‘REALITY CHECKING’

The BBC’s Reality Check ‘team’ (as it is referred to on air) supposedly provides neutral information in the BBC’s battle against so-called Fake News. The unit was set up during the EU referendum and as previous News-watch reports have evidenced – is often strongly biased towards the Remain perspective. In this survey period, Chris Morris, the main contributor to Reality Check items, heavily focused on stressing the perspective of the EU and on the practical difficulties of Brexit, especially those related to Northern Ireland and customs/tariffs. He delivered a specially-gathered package from the ferry port of Holyhead to that end, and the unit also commissioned a report from the Institute for Government which was strongly gloomy about Brexit preparedness and outcomes. There was no corresponding effort from the Reality Check operation to explore whether ‘no deal’ could lead to positive outcomes, as, for example, was claimed on the programme by Bernard Jenkin and David Davis.

Overall, Reality Check input was heavily biased. This was especially evident in the first item below, which is analysed in depth in the special report section.

September 17: An Institute of Government report commissioned by the BBC Reality Check unit outlined the negative impact of ‘no deal’. This was buttressed by an interview with Jill Rutter, chief executive of the Institute of Government, who focused heavily on the damage that ‘no deal’ would cause (further analysed in the special report section).

September 19: Chris Morris said that the EU liked the Chequers proposals on security but not on trade, and disliked the separation of goods and services because it was cherry-picking.

September 21: Chris Morris spoke to Stena and Holyhead council about the Northern Ireland border. There was a prediction that in future, the port might be by-passed, with exports going directly from Ireland to EU ports. There was also a (balancing) prediction that trade across the Irish Sea would continue to grow. He said in a second sequence that EU leaders had decided to

25 ramp up pressures on the UK. The issue now was that the Irish backstop could break up the UK (also further analysed in the special reports section).

September 22: Chris Morris said Theresa May had rejected both the Norway and Canada economic models because they would not solve the Irish border problem, and could separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. He contended that if customs checks were not in Ireland itself, they would have to be elsewhere. Warehouses could be used, but for food this was a problem because the EU was very strict. Time was now running out for fresh proposals and if Chequers was rejected, it would create political problems for Mrs May.

October 15: Chris Morris suggested that the backstop was the subject of intense negotiation, with the customs union at its centre. An issue was a firm end date for any transition period, with the EU disagreeing with the UK’s position.

October 18: Chris Morris said that Michel Barnier had gone out of his way to explain the backstop agreement would allow Northern Ireland to stay in the customs union and single market while the UK left. He added the UK wanted to avoid a border in the Irish Sea but the issue could not be resolved until after Brexit because of the complexity. He said if the date became the end of 2012, it would give time for a free trade deal and avoid the need for the backstop. He noted that the UK, in return, would have to obey all EU rules and the cost could be £10.5 billion.

GOVERNMENT SPOKESMEN/PERSPECTIVE (INTERVIEWS)

In the 11 editions of Today analysed, eight contained interview sequences with key Conservative pro-government and pro-Chequers figures. As already noted in the sections above, these sequences added up to more than 7,000 words – occupying almost an hour of running time. On their own, these sequences totalled more than that of all those who supported a more decisive Brexit.

All of these pro-Chequers guests pushed that, despite the alleged setbacks in both Salzburg and Brussels, negotiations were developing well, that reported negotiating problems were illusory, and that the UK was on course for a March 31 Brexit which would involve departure from the customs union and the single market as well as the repatriation of powers. They also claimed that alternatives to the Chequers proposals were not practical, and that leaving without an agreement would lead to the loss of a million jobs.

26

Only minor challenges to this blanket stance were provided by Today presenters. They suggested that the government’s optimism about the talks could be misplaced, that the EU would not accept Chequers without further concessions, especially regarding the Irish border, and that, on the other hand, the ERG wing of the Conservative party wanted a more radical approach such as the Canada free trade option. Lines of questioning which were not closely pursued by the Today interviewers included (for example) whether the EU’s position relating to the backstop was reasonable; or the extent to which a free trade Canadian-style trading was practical, or acceptable to the EU and other parties.

These interviews presented an important opportunity to hold to account the government’s approach to the Brexit negotiations, and to establish the extent to which a clean break from the EU was likely to be achieved in line with the referendum mandate to leave. But Today’s editorial approach was mostly not on those lines. Instead, the programme was more focused on asking these government and pro-Chequers figures how much they were prepared to compromise with the EU, and presenters also stressed the dangers of ‘no deal’ if such agreements were not reached. Above all, presenters also seemed content to accept (with only occasional minor challenges) the government’s contention that the Chequers proposals amounted to the only way of achieving ‘Brexit’.

September 17: Theresa May asserted that her Chequers proposals would deliver Brexit and denied she was waving the white flag. Mrs May also dismissed ERG proposals for dealing with the Irish border as unworkable.

September 19: James Brokenshire defended Chequers in an appearance alongside Bruno Bonnell of En Marche. He maintained that the Chequers proposals were workable and that the EU leaders were more receptive to it than was being claimed in some quarters. Against claims from Mishal Husain that the UK would have to accept Canada or Norway terms, he again claimed that Chequers would be accepted and was the only way forward.

September 21 (Brexit Select Committee report): Stephen Crabb, a member of the Select Committee, said that Chequers was needed and could command a majority in the House of Commons. He said – in reaction to reports that EU leaders had rejected Mrs May’s proposals – that the government should not panic and must stick to its guns. In answer to claims that he was close to the ERG, Mr Crabb said he supported Mrs May’s leadership and approach.

September 21: James Brokenshire said the Chequers deal was viable, and asserted that it was now up to the EU to ‘evolve’ its approach towards the proposals. He claimed that Chequers was workable and would deliver Brexit. He said he was confident of a positive response.

27

September 22: Jeremy Hunt denied claims from Martha Kearney that Mrs May’s proposals had been rejected and her negotiating stance had backfired. He pushed that she had maintained that the EU must accept her proposals in order to keep the integrity of Northern Ireland within the UK. He asserted that good progress was being made and that both sides wanted to avoid a ‘no deal’ Brexit, which would cost a million jobs. Ms Kearney asked why, instead of risking that the UK could ‘crash out’ with a deal, he did not go for a free trade proposal, Mr Hunt replied that he was not dismissing that (or anything) but preferred the Chequers proposals.

October 16: James Brokenshire, reacting to claims that some members of the Cabinet uneasy about Chequers had met the previous evening over pizza, insisted again that good progress was being made in the EU negotiations over the withdrawal agreement. The Prime Minister needed solid support as the talks continued. He insisted that the UK was planning to leave the customs union and single market.

October 18: David Lidington defended the proposed extension of the transition period as an ‘insurance policy’ to avoid a ‘cliff-edge’ over Northern Ireland and said huge amounts of progress were being made in the negotiations. He claimed that Martha Kearney was ‘making assumptions’ and ‘jumping over too many bridges’ in her claim that what was being proposed would cost the UK billions and entail the UK accepting EU rules without having a say. Mr Lidington also dismissed claims from Nick Boles that the UK position was ‘desperate’ and maintained that the negotiations had covered 90 per cent of the ground. He dismissed the cancellation of the ‘next summit’ as unimportant and said one would be convened when necessary. He also said that ‘no’ deal’ planning by the EU was sensible, and the UK had been doing so for two years.

October 19: Jeremy Hunt, argued that the latest proposals for a transition period were an insurance policy and framed as practical proposals to get round the Ireland problems. He claimed the ‘spirit’ of the Brexit deal would remain intact, but there was also a need to create stability for business. He claimed current difficulties were because the EU wanted to do a withdrawal agreement first and then talk about the future relationship, but also wanted the Irish backstop included in the withdrawal agreement. Mr Hunt added that the UK would not accept the carving up of the UK, and the transition period was thus necessary, but equally, Brexit was on track for March and that would entail leaving the customs union, the single market, and getting control of the border, money and laws. Against claims by Iain Duncan Smith (on Newsnight) that Mrs May had ‘buckled’, Mr Hunt said she had not.

CONTRIBUTOR ‘REMAIN’ PERSPECTIVE (UK GUESTS)

28

As the overall programme statistics shows, the UK ‘Remain’ or pro-EU perspective was represented heavily on the surveyed editions of Today, and such guests substantially outnumbered those who supported Brexit. Editorially, the programme allowed with only minor challenge guests in this category to voice their objections to the Leave proposals and also to call for a second referendum. The key interview sequences were:

September 17: Nick Clegg and Polly Toynbee appeared in separate interview sequences – both argued in favour of a second referendum.

September 18: Vince Cable said he wanted a second referendum/people’s vote; Ian Blackford, SNP, said he favoured more immigration to Scotland, in line with free movement, and to stay in the customs union.

September 19: Sadiq Khan, commenting about immigration, said, in effect, that the current EU regime (free movement) should continue.

September 20: Tom McTague, of Politico, suggested that the two sides (the UK government and the EU) were miles apart over Northern Ireland and noted that Emmanuel Macron was concerned about the integrity of the single market. He thus stressed the importance of the EU’s perspective.

September 21: Gina Miller said people were worried about the direction of the Brexit negotiations and wanted that changed. She wanted a referendum vote on the proposals with an option to remain. She did not want the chaos of ‘no deal’ and, referring to the 2016 referendum, asserted that democracy was not one day. Tom Newton Dunn of the Sun said Salzburg was an unprecedented humiliation for Mrs May and a miscalculation by her. He compared her approach to the Iraqi government spokesman Comical Ali. Joey Jones said Salzburg was a flat ‘no’ to Chequers but it had taken two months. Keir Starmer said the government’s approach to the negotiations was collapsing and claimed that ‘no deal’ was now a possibility.

September 22: David Miliband asserted that ‘no deal’ would be a disaster and said there must now be another vote. Labour MP Dawn Butler claimed that Labour had been clear about Brexit from the outset and wanted adherence to its six tests. Miranda Green argued that Theresa May’s robust response to Salzburg had secured good newspaper headlines but had not got her off the hook. She added that there would have to be further government compromises and that they seemed to be addicted to ultimatums.

October 15: Mary Lou McDonald, of Sinn Fein, claimed Brexit threatened to sunder the Good Friday Agreement and asserted that the people of Northern Ireland had not voted for Brexit. It 29 would be an utter disgrace to create borders again. Her party wanted a second referendum. Keir Starmer argued that to protect jobs and services, the UK must stay in the EU single market, and claimed the government was making no progress and had (wrongly) not come to Parliament with what it was planning. He wanted a general election or People’s Vote to resolve Brexit issues. Michael Moore, the US commentator, said the Brexit vote was based on working class discontent and was nothing to do with worries about the EU.

October 17: Lord Ricketts claimed that the abyss of ‘no deal’ would be terrible for all sides.

October 18: Nick Boles MP argued that the EFTA/EEA option would work, and rejected the idea of an extended transition. Stefanie Bolzen, of Die Welt, said that Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron were sticking together to show there was ‘lots to talk about’. Tony Connolly of Irish TV said the fundamentals were still problematic.

October 19: Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s Prime Minister, was asked by Martha Kearney how important his country’s trade deal with the EU was, and what he thought about the UK leaving the EU. He replied it was a negative move and would have preferred the UK to be part of the EU.

BBC SPECIAL REPORTS ON THE IMPACT OF BREXIT

There were several specially-prepared features which were devised to place heavy negative question marks about the likely impact of Brexit, and especially if there was ‘no deal’. There was no equivalent balancing material which looked at the potential benefits of not accepting either the EU’s demands or the Chequers approach. The analysis which follows of the special reports illustrates the extent of the editorial efforts to show both the difficulties of Brexit and the negative consequences if the UK ‘crashed out’.

September 17: In the 7am bulletin, was the following report from Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris:

NEWSREADER: With just over six months to go until Britain is due to leave the European Union, a report from a political research group the Institute for Government has warned that the government is running out of time to implement a successful Brexit. The Institute says even if a deal is reached the proposed transition period will be too short to finalise a future trade agreement. The report was commissioned by BBC News. Here's our Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris.

CHRIS MORRIS: The Institute for Government report lays out the sobering scale of what it calls the unprecedented task facing government. The government says it's

30

planning for no-deal Brexit is far advanced but the IFG says that planning has come too late to help many businesses. In nine out of ten broad areas of policy, it says the government won't be able to avoid major negative impacts of ‘no deal’ next year. And even if a deal is agreed, the IFG argues that it will be totally unfeasible to negotiate and ratify a free trade agreement with the EU in the 21 months transition period which is envisaged. The government also faces a huge challenge to get all the legislation it needs before Brexit through parliament. But while the iFG report gives a green light to more than 80% of the negotiating objectives, finding a solution that would avoid a hard border in Ireland is still flashing red.

Chris Morris in an earlier Reality Check assessment of the report (6.38am) said that the conclusions showed that businesses believed that time was running short to prepare for Brexit, and also argued that if Britain left ‘abruptly’ with ‘no deal’, the government would not be able to avoid ‘major negative impacts across most areas of the economy’. Mr Morris added that the Institute also believed that there was not enough time in the current timetable to make a satisfactory deal and also that a transition period of 21 months was insufficient because preparations for major projects such as the London Olympics took 11 years.

The emphasis in his highly negative analysis was amplified on the BBC website15. This piece – unlike that above – did not mention that the Institute for Government report had been commissioned by the BBC. Nor did it point out that the Institute is a strongly left-leaning think- tank, many of whose key figures members, including Lord Sainsbury of Turville (chairman), Bronwen Maddox (chief executive), Baroness Amos, Liam Byrne and Richard Lambert have strong connections with the Labour party and/or are supporters of Remain.

Although the Institute of Government report purported to be objective, much of what it said about potential timescales and disruption were highly contentious forecasts. Other groups with significant knowledge of the UK’s relationship with the EU are much less negative. For example, a report16 prepared by Cambridge academics Robert Tombs and Graham Gudgin for the Briefings for Brexit group at roughly the same time as that of the Institute for Government forecast predicted that ‘no deal’ would lead to only minimal disruption to UK-EU trade and generate numerous economic benefits. Why was this not also elevated to BBC headline status, or at least brought into the frame to balance such negativity and incorporate alternate views about ‘no deal’?

Mr Morris made no mention of these differences of opinion, and so gave the impression that the Institute for Government predictions were a matter of uncontested and objective fact. This

15 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45522747 16 https://briefingsforbrexit.com/preparing-to-exit-an-bfb-report-on-alternatives-to-chequers/

31 favouritism was compounded by an interview between Jill Rutter, the lead author of the Institute’s report and Today presenter Nick Robinson at 7.33am. In the introduction, Mr Robinson again emphasised that, according to the report, the government was not prepared for Brexit, but did not mention that what he called the ‘think-tank’ which had prepared it was run by a board and chief executive which believed that leaving the EU would be damaging. Mr Robinson then effectively gave Ms Rutter a largely unchallenged platform to outline in detail the full extent of the Institute’s negative perspective, even asking ‘how miserable’ civil servants were about dealing with the difficulties of the Brexit process. His only qualification to the Brexit gloom was in putting to Ms Rutter that ‘lots of people’ had said that, to avoid the ‘cliff-edge’, there would be ‘special mini-deals’ to ensure planes kept flying and food kept coming across borders. Ms Rutter replied that avoiding such problems would depend on how much the EU would ‘play ball’, and Mr Robinson did not challenge her further.

Overall, therefore, in the coverage afforded to the Institute for Government report, the Today programme made a major effort to inflate the report importance and to emphasise its authority. In summary, areas of concern included that the Corporation actually commissioned the report at licence fee-payers’ expense (for reasons it did not explain to listeners); did not explain what commissioning meant in terms of the remit of the report; did not tell listeners that the Institute had a strongly Remain board, a factor highly relevant to how it had tackled its task; elevated the report’s findings to headline status, conveying yet again that Brexit was fraught with complexity; did not mention in the consideration of the findings alternative, balancing views about the Brexit process (Bernard Jenkin, who appeared on the same morning, for example, was not asked about the report); did not challenge the negativity of the conclusions – and indeed gave the report’s lead author substantial airtime to stress the negativity involved; and finally, also gave the BBC- generated report and the Institute for Government an especially elevated status by discussing it positively within the Reality Check framework.

On September 19, there was a special report by Adam Fleming which opened with the question of why Britain was drinking less champagne. Nick Robinson said in his introduction that champagne producers believed it was because Britons were too gloomy to celebrate because of Brexit. He thus set a framework which strongly and explicitly identified leaving the EU as a major cause of national concern.

Adam Fleming then spoke to Jean-Marie Barillere, president of the champagne trade body in France, who suggested the decline in sales of 6 per cent over the previous year was because people in Britain were not happy and had a problem. He did not cite Brexit as the reason. Mr Fleming then said that Michel Barnier, the chief EU negotiator of Brexit, wanted protection of champagne (along with 3,000 food ‘indications’ in EU law) written into British law as part of the terms of Brexit. There was nothing further of substance in the report. 32

In fact, other reports about champagne sales, available when this Today report was compiled17, indicate that British sources within the drinks industry believed that the decline in champagne sales was due to other factors entirely. One was increased preference for and consumption of Prosecco, another, a sharp rise in the quality and availability of British sparkling wine, and the third, disproportionate steep increases in the cost of champagne by producers in France.

The report was framed deliberately and unreasonably by Nick Robinson as a simple Brexit scare story which Adam Fleming’s reporting in no way directly substantiated.

September 21: Justin Webb opened another report from Reality Check correspondent Chris Morris by observing that the Irish border remained the biggest obstacle to the UK’s EU leaving agreement and then that the future of trade with and within Ireland was a concern on this side of the Irish Sea. Chris Morris first spoke to Ian Davies, trade director for Stena Line. Mr Davies contended that the Holyhead-Ireland trade traffic, consisting of 400-500 articulated lorries from two ferries arriving at Holyhead within 25 minutes of each other, had to be kept moving because there wasn’t the standing space for what would add up to almost five kilometres of lorries. Chris Morris said that currently nothing got in the way of the trade. He then spoke to Caroline Thedens, managing director of a company which made bedding for farm animals. She said that because of Brexit uncertainty, depending on what happened they might have to ‘change...focus and re- evaluate what we do’. Mr Morris then noted that ‘all’ her business was done through Holyhead, and Ms Thedens said that was quicker and easier, so ‘hopefully they can broker a good deal for all parties concerned’. Mr Morris then asked rhetorically whether ‘the possible introduction of customs and other checks threaten this entire operation’ before turning to Dylan Williams, who was said to be in charge of economic affairs for Anglesey Council. Mr Williams confirmed there was a lot of uncertainty about the impact on logistics and congestion. If Holyhead and the UK were bypassed in the trade between the Republic of Ireland and Europe, and there was no economic activity, then the long-term future of Holyhead was very much at risk. Mr Morris asked whether at the moment the uncertainty was difficult to deal with. Mr Williams responded that the implications and scenarios were ‘simply too big to get your head round and put in a proper place’. Mr Morris finally spoke to Ian Davies of Stena again, first observing that ‘the words Brexit and uncertainty never seem too far apart in places like Holyhead’. Mr Davies said he hoped the challenges ahead would not be unsurmountable, and claimed that despite having short-term concerns about Brexit, he saw good growth in the longer term. He added that ‘free trade’ was the key element to economic growth. Mr Morris concluded that two ‘big Brexit issues’

17 https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/936800/brexit-news-eu-uk-champagne-english-wine

33 coincided on the Welsh coast, trade across the Irish border and at UK ports. He asserted that Holyhead was relying on both remaining as open as they were now, and needed ‘a Brexit outcome which secures that’.

Close scrutiny is required to understand fully Mr Morris’s core message here. He carefully assembled in this tightly-edited package a range of opinions which all pointed in one direction: that Brexit created massive uncertainty to UK-Ireland trade, could lead to the UK being bypassed in Ireland-EU trade, could also generate massive 5 kilometre lorry queues at Holyhead, and the only solution was ‘free trade’, which would result if – as the EU proposed – Northern Ireland stayed in the single market. At each stage, Mr Morris carefully amplified the dangers and problems posited by his carefully-edited and assembled group of contributors. Especially noticeable were his statements that ‘Brexit and uncertainty never seemed too far apart’; and that Holyhead was relying on things remaining ‘as open as they are now’. What he did not say was that Stena as a company – based in Sweden – has been from the outset massively opposed to Brexit18. Nor did he mention that many economists who support Brexit do not believe that the threats identified and emphasised by him would be an issue of the scale projected if there was ‘no deal’.

October 16: On October 16, Ross Hawkins reported from a Leave Means Leave rally in Bournemouth. Justin Webb, in the introduction to the package, said that Conor Burns, ‘one of Boris Johnson’s key lieutenants’, had taken to the stage in his constituency and heard Theresa May described as duplicitous and deceitful on a stage that included NIgel Farage and Sammy Wilson of the DUP. He also noted that those calling for a second referendum were also planning a rally. Ross Hawkins, first included actuality of Mr Burns saying that it had been a mistake to shut down the Leave campaigning operation, and noted that he had chosen to be at the rally despite having been invited to 10, Downing Street. Mr Hawkins then said that Mr Burns being at the event meant he had heard Nigel Farage also say that Mrs May had been ‘deceitful and duplicitous’. Mr Hawkins was then heard asking Mr Burns if he had been comfortable sitting on the stage when Mr Farage had made his remarks. Mr Burns replied that he did not believe the description should have been assigned to Mrs May because she was doing a difficult job in difficult circumstances. Mr Hawkins noted that he had not contradicted him and had ‘sat there mutely looking at him’ when Mr Farage had spoken. Mr Burns replied that he was ‘looking out’ as the remarks came and ‘not applauding’. Mr Hawkins noted that others, however, made ‘plenty of noise’, then noted that Sammy Wilson of the DUP had said afterwards that his party, despite their objections to Theresa May’s Brexit ‘proposal’ would not withdraw their support for government legislation. There was a quote from Mr Wilson to that effect, and that his party

18 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/eu-referendum-brexit-letter-remain-barclays-anglo-american- a7094811.html 34 while not knowing what the final outcome looked like, was not going to ‘wreck all around us’. Mr Hawkins commented that this might mean Mrs May might avoid the DUP voting against her budget, ‘if she kept her Brexit policy unresolved until then’. Mr Wilson then commented that she could not keep avoiding votes. Mr Hawkins noted that another campaign was going on outside the hall. There was a quote from Genevieve Talon – who Mr Hawkins later explained was a supporter of the People’s Vote, ‘the campaign for another referendum’ – who said she was there because her movement opposed Nigel Farage’s view that ‘no deal’ was an option and believed ‘no deal’ would be ‘catastrophic for the country’. There was actuality of crowd chanting their demands for a second referendum. Mr Hawkins noted that People’s Vote had staged a rally in London in the summer and planned another one that weekend. Tom Baldwin, an organiser, said he believed it would be the ‘biggest, best and loudest’ anti-Brexit march so far. Mr Hawkins noted that Mr Baldwin conceded that his movement had not won ‘sufficient parliamentary support for another vote yet’. Mr Baldwin then said:

I don’t think there’s a majority now for anything. But I think right now you’re seeing an appalling mess, the signs which, you know, recognised by people across the country I think, that, whether you voted Leave or Remain, no one really voted for this.

Mr Hawkins added that Mr Baldwin wanted people to put pressure on MPs to back his cause. There was then a quote from Nigel Farage saying ‘we are going to win’. Mr Hawkins commented:

Just as Nigel Farage wants his supporters to write to MPs, backing his plan. Because, for now, it’s MPs who have decisions to make, but people on both sides have an eye to the near future, rousing activists and raising funds, so if the Prime Minister’s Brexit plans do collapse, if political chaos follows, they will be ready to fight to take control.

Mr Hawkins said that both ‘sides’ were ready to ‘fight to take control’.

Overall, his aim, in a tightly-edited package, was to show that whatever was happening in the Brexit negotiations, Theresa May’s plans were facing multi-sided attack: from elements of the Conservative party, the DUP, and those who wanted a second referendum. Mr Hawkins’ main interest in the Leave Means Leave rally was not about the goals of the movement, but to highlight that Conor Burns had chosen to be at the rally rather than in Downing Street, and had then had not reacted when Nigel Farage had attacked Mrs May. The DUP input gathered by him established that – though concerned about the May exit proposals – they were not yet ready to withdraw support from the government. The People’s Vote contributions conveyed that ‘no deal’ would be ‘catastrophic’, and that, although their aspirations had not yet been made formal policy, they were about to hold their biggest and best protest march.

35

October 19: Ross Hawkins reported from the port of Harwich in Essex. Presenter Martha Kearney first asked rhetorically where the ‘dramas’ of the past few days on Brexit left businesses ‘that have to live with the consequences’. She added that ‘one of the world’s biggest ferry operators’, Stena Line, had told Today that a ‘no deal’ Brexit could hit food supplies and lead to traders bypassing Great Britain. The company had also warned that customs software might fail, causing delays. The first contributor in Mr Hawkins’ package was a Stena captain, who said that loading and unloading was currently very quick. Then Ian Hampton – said to be the company executive liaising with the government about Brexit – claimed that anxiety (about Brexit) was very high because his company could not plan about what it did not know. Mr Hawkins said that his warning was that traders might no longer use Great Britain to get from ‘Ireland to Northern Ireland to the rest of the EU, with commercial consequences for his company’. Mr Hampton confirmed this by saying that overnight, if a border appeared, in future, trade would flow directly from Ireland to the continent, missing out on the UK as a land bridge. Mr Hawkins asked him if his company would make the decision, if ‘this friction is in place’ to sail less in and out of Great Britain and more directly between the Republic of Ireland and the continent. Mr Hampton again confirmed this could happen. Mr Hawkins added that ‘crucially for politicians pondering this subject at summits’, Mr Hampton was not just worried about a ‘no deal’ Brexit ‘leading to friction at the Northern Ireland border’ but also about the EU leaders’ idea of a backstop and the possibility of extra checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea. Mr Hampton said he wanted guidelines on what declarations would be required. Mr Hawkins asked him whether if clarity did not come, there would be the risk of ‘huge tailbacks at ports and all those things people want to avoid’. Mr Hampton replied:

Yeah, absolutely, because any lack of clarity is creating ambiguity in terms of how we should operate. So, in reality, this could create significant delay, there’s a lot of volumes every day, that come in and out of the United Kingdom.

Mr Hawkins asked if this could affect ‘whether the food is or is not on supermarket shelves’. Mr Hampton said he believed it could. Mr Hawkins asked what the collective state of readiness was, and Mr Hampton replied that it was ‘low’, then clarifying that there was ‘very little readiness’. He added that new customs software – which ministers thought could cope with a ‘no deal’ Brexit – was not written for the purpose and could be unstable. Mr Hawkins said:

Well, businesses don’t like change. Stena can worry, but it can hardly move its ports or even its shipping routes very quickly. It can’t cut and run. And the government says it’s crucial, of course, to keep trade flowing after Brexit, that’s why they’ve proposed their plans to the EU and are working with ports. . . . [there followed a brief clip from a Stena captain, who hoped matters could be sorted out] But time’s running out, and many in this business no longer share his patience or his optimism. 36

This package was seemingly framed to give maximum impact to the concept that if there was ‘no deal’ in the Brexit negotiations, the UK would be hit by trade from the Irish Republic to continental Europe bypassing the UK, long delays at ports, and food shortages. These negative messages were regarded editorially as being so important that they were elevated to bulletin status on the Today programme. The feature reiterated and amplified concerns expressed in the September 21 package from Holyhead by Chris Morris. Mr Hawkins used the tightly-edited comments of Mr Hampton of Stena to publicise to maximum extent the demands of the company, without also stating the relevant information that Stena opposed Brexit19 and that since the referendum result was announced, the company has been warning of the negative consequences unless the UK stayed in the single market – described by it as ‘frictionless trade’ – and was threatening to re-badge its UK fleet out of the UK if that objective was not achieved20. Nor did he include the important additional information that, despite whatever reservations the company might have about Brexit outcome, Stena is introducing on UK-Ireland routes by 2020/1 three major new vessels, including what has been said to be the world’s largest ferry ship21, and two new exceptionally large capacity freight ferries22. On October 8, as Ross Hawkins prepared this package, John May, former director of Hambros Bank and chairman of Business for Britain, wrote an article called ‘Debunking the Myths about Trade and Friction’23. In it, he spelled out in detail how the alleged obstacles to ‘no deal’ post-Brexit trade claimed by Mr Hampton and amplified deliberately by Mr Hawkins were at best contentious and at worst, exaggerated fantasy. In that context, this package is at the level of ‘fake news’, the objective of which was to suggest that a ‘no deal’ Brexit would have major consequences and that only way of dealing with that was to ensure ‘frictionless trade’ – code for staying in the EU single market.

BBC ‘COMMENT’

Correspondents are expected to assess the developments they cover. Increasingly, the evidence presented below shows that such BBC judgments have become anti-Brexit – and/or heavily focused on the difficulties involved in the exit process.

A typical example of the negativity involved was in a sequence at the beginning if the survey period (18/9) involving four of the BBC’s most high-profile correspondents. Norman Smith first stressed that the Commons Brexit select committee was recommending that the

19 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/eu-referendum-brexit-letter-remain-barclays-anglo-american- a7094811.html 20 https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/stena-line-may-reflag-uk-vessels-following-brexit 21 https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/worlds-largest-ferry-will-run-from-dublin-to-holyhead-8th3grttn 22 http://news.stenaline.co.uk/pressreleases/stena-signs-order-for-two-additional-e-flexer-ships-2588429 23 https://brexitcentral.com/debunking-myths-trade-friction/

37

UK stayed in the single market, then claimed that Theresa May’s ‘only hope’ at the Salzburg European Council meeting was that EU leaders would not make things difficult for her, and then said that Vince Cable had described Brexit at his party conference as an ‘erotic spasm of fundamentalists’. In the same sequence, Katya Adler, giving her perspective on the difficulties of Brexit, said that if there was ‘no deal’, commercial airline flights would be ‘compromised to say the least’, and then Kamal Ahmed (economics editor) said categorically that the EU was the UK’s most important trading partner, and that any changes which involved tougher rules would be ‘a problem’. He stressed that bodies like the IMF wanted as ‘steady a state as possible’ and had warned of rising prices if the current trading regime changed. Finally, Laura Kuenssberg declared in the same sequence that ‘no deal’ could feel like ‘chaos’.

The comments of arguably the BBC’s highest-profile correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg, included: that ‘no deal’ could feel like chaos (18/9); that EU officials had been saying all along in private that they wanted a second referendum and that Theresa May’s ‘divide and rule’ strategy was causing irritation to EU officials (20/9); that the Salzburg reactions to the Chequers proposals had put the skids under the UK’s negotiation strategy against Mrs May’s belief that if she talked loudly (like an English tourist) she would be listened to (21/9); (in the lead-in to an interview with Keir Starmer) that Mrs May was in a bunker which was closing in on her in that she had tried to keep the terms of the single market but could not keep her promises (15/10); that negotiations were now beginning to smash up against the Brexit deadline, and it was a moot point whether Parliament would allow an EU ‘crash out’(17/10); and that Mrs May’s proposed extension period would be very difficult to get through Parliament (18/10).

In parallel, Europe correspondent Katya Adler said that the UK could not just leave the EU because it had financial obligations, and if there was ‘no deal’, commercial flights and trade would be compromised ‘to say the least’ (18/9); the EU mood music was not to accept the Chequers plan (19/9); that David Davis’s ‘divide and rule’ approach to the negotiations had failed, that it was no surprise that EU leaders wanted a second referendum, and that there were no splits among them in the approach to Northern Ireland (20/9); that EU leaders’ had not gone out to humiliate Mrs May, but their tone had matched ‘her stridency’(21/9); that EU leaders in Brussels were claiming that the latest rebuff to Mrs May was not a ‘big bust-up’ and wanted a deal, but France was the most hardline country and ‘no deal’ was still a possibility (16/9); that the EU thought it was compromising, but believed there were still problems with Northern Ireland (17/9); that the IMF had warned that if there was ‘no deal’, there would be damage to UK and EU businesses (17/9); that EU leaders had ‘scraped the barrel’ to try find something good to say about Mrs May and decided only upon that her body language was good, but had said off the record that she had come up with nothing 38 new ((18/9); that the EU continued to believe that ‘no deal’ would be ‘costly and chaotic’ (18/9); Mrs May’s refusal to sign up to the Northern Ireland backstop was causing ‘eye- rolling dejection’ among EU leaders, and they were also frustrated at having to spend taxpayers’ money on Brexit and having to do contingency planning for ‘no deal’ and lorry parks (18/9); that Jacob Rees-Mogg’s plans for the Irish border were viewed as ‘more problematic’ than Mrs May’s because there would be customs checks on the Irish mainland border (19/9).

It is relevant to point out that in the Brexit question, Katya Adler is not an impartial observer. She said in an edition (28/12) of Correspondents Look Ahead 2018:

‘The huge outpouring of European emotion the day after the UK voted to leave has given way to dispassion. You know, there's a dispassionate viewpoint now. Brexit either happens or it doesn't happen. They hope we'll change our mind. They hope that they've made this process hideous enough that the UK will change their mind. And if they don't the UK will leave and can forget any special deals as a former member. The UK becomes officially what's known as a 'third country'. which in EUspeak means 'an outsider'. And that means it will be treated as such. It's not about punishment, as it's so often viewed from the United Kingdom. It is about the EU, which on the world trading stage is a feared player that sets the rules. It is a rule setter. And the UK is going to end up being a rule taker. Whether it stays very close to the EU or has a more distant relationship with the EU, the EU will set those regulations. And the public in the United Kingdom was never given to understand that when it was time to vote.’

In her framing of these remarks she made enormous assumptions which are biased: in effect, that the British people did not know what they were voting for in 2016 when they chose ‘leave’; that the EU is a ‘feared player’ on the world trading stage; that the UK would have to accept EU regulations set by the EU. She also said the EU had made the process’ hideous enough’ abut that it was not about ‘punishment’ – without realising the contradiction, further illustrating her bias.

All these were Brexit developments. But the point here is that these key correspondents painted a mostly negative picture of the difficulties involved, and they chose to stress mainly that perspective. There were very few balancing comments.

The full sequential list of BBC comments is:

September 17: Laura Kuenssberg said the government was banking on that no-one would dare oppose Mrs May. 39

September 18: Norman Smith reported that the Brexit select committee had warned of the consequences of a ‘no deal’ Brexit and was advocating that the UK stayed in the single market and customs union. He also said that Theresa May’s only hope at Salzburg was that the EU would not make things more difficult for her, and that Vince Cable had called Brexit an ‘erotic spasm of fundamentalists’. Katya Adler said the UK could not just leave the EU because it had financial obligations. If there was ‘no deal’, commercial flights and trade would be compromised, ‘to say the least’. Kamal Ahmed said the EU was the UK’s most important trading partner and any changes which involved tougher rules would be a problem. He said the LSE and IMF had warned that as steady state as possible was needed, and if there was change prices would go up. Laura Kuenssberg said ‘no deal’ could feel like chaos and arguments could go on for years.

September 19: Iain Watson reported that those involved in the push for a second referendum believed it could be voted on in the Commons. Katya Adler said that the EU mood music was not to accept the Chequers plan.

September 20: At 6.10am, Bethany Bell said that Brexit was secondary on the Salzburg agenda, with immigration deemed a higher priority. Kevin Connolly underlined that the Czech and Maltese prime ministers were wistfully hoping that Brexit would not happen. Laura Kuenssberg commented that EU officials had been saying in private all along that they wanted a second referendum. She added that Theresa May’s ‘divide and rule’ strategy was causing irritation to EU officials. Katya Adler said that David Davis’s divide and rule approach had failed. It was no surprise that EU leaders wanted a second referendum, and there were no splits among leaders in their attitude towards Northern Ireland.

September 21: Chris Mason said that Salzburg had resulted in a’a bucket of who knows what’ being showered on Mrs May’s head. This left her in a very tricky position, with Ireland remaining the big problem. Laura Kuenssberg said that Salzburg had put the skids under the UK’s negotiations. The EU had been resistant to Chequers from the outset but Mrs May believed that talking loudly (like an English tourist) would make them listen and change. Katya Adler said EU leaders at Salzburg had said they had not gone out to humiliate Mrs May, but their tone had matched her stridency. John Pienaar said there was no certainty where Brexit would now lead.

October 15: Adam Fleming said there were intensive talks over the Northern Ireland border centred on the province staying in the customs union. He claimed there was only a 10 per cent chance that theatrics were involved. Norman Smith said the problem was on differences over deciding when the conditions of the backstop had been met, with the Cabinet now beginning to wobble in its support for Mrs May. The problem was getting the agreement of France. Nick Robinson suggested that a Tory leadership contest could now be on the cards. Katya Adler said 40 the EU were claiming this was not a big bust up and wanted a deal. She said at the moment, France was at the most hardline country and no deal was still a possibility. Laura Kuenssberg, in the preamble to the interview with Keir Starmer, said that Mrs May was in a bunker and it was closing in. She had been trying to square a circle by keeping the terms of the single market but she could not keep her promises.

October 16: Norman Smith suggested eight Cabinet members who were ‘putative rebels’ had brazenly held a meeting over pizza and could vote against the current ‘putative deal’. Mrs May was trying to delay matters in the hope she could change minds over Northern Ireland. Katya Adler said that rather worryingly, Donald Tusk had said that ‘no deal’ was likelier than ever. She said that France and Germany were particularly hardline in their approach but wanted to avoid ‘no deal’. They thought Mrs May was weak. John Pienaar said the pizza cabinet meeting was a reminder to Mrs May that a large cadre was willing to rebel. Nick Robinson asked if Theresa May was a dead woman walking. Mr Pienaar said Mrs May was living on hope and borrowed time, and the deadlock looked real (rather than theatrics).

October 17: Adam Fleming said good progress was being made in some areas with issues at stake being the extent to which the UK would have to accept EU regulations and trade policy. He said EU leaders were worried that the majority voting principle binding them might limit their powers. Norman Smith said the next scheduled EU ‘summit’ was not going to happen because Theresa May had not come up with new proposals. He claimed the basic problem was that the UK did not really have a policy and was hoping that the EU would take pity. Mr Smith speculated they might do so. He claimed that if there was no deal, both sides would lose out, but there was now a real danger that this might happen. Katya Adler commented that the EU believed it was compromising, and were now focusing on Northern Ireland where there were problems. She noted that the IMF had warned that if there was no deal, there would be damage to UK businesses and across the EU, too. In his brief interview of Roger Daltrey of The Who, John Wilson suggested he was out of step in his pro-Brexit beliefs with other performers and suggested it might be harder for bands to tour post-Brexit. Laura Kuenssberg warned that things were now beginning to smash up against the Brexit deadline and that meant it might not be possible to get the necessary legislation through the House of Commons. It was a ‘moot point’ whether the Commons would allow an EU ‘crash out’.

October 18: Martha Kearney suggested that there had been little progress over Northern Ireland so ‘no deal’ was a closer prospect. Adam Fleming said the President of the European Parliament had said that Theresa May had brought nothing new to the table. He claimed the tabling of the extension period was ‘a bit inevitable’ because EU leaders had been saying for weeks that the current transition period was not long enough. Martha Kearney said that breakthrough hopes had been dashed by Michel Barnier. Katya Adler said EU leaders had 41

‘scraped the barrel’ to say something good about Mrs May and had decided upon that her body language was good, but had also said off the record that she had come up with no new ideas. Angela Merkel had said afterwards that the EU had to stand firm. Ms Adler said the EU remained concerned about no deal because it would be ’costly and chaotic’. They were kicking the can down the road (as they always did) but had always warned that 20 months was not a long enough transition period. Laura Kuenssberg said Mrs May’s proposed extension period would be very difficult to get through Parliament. At 8.10am, Martha Kearney said that negotiations were in stalemate, with a proposal for a year’s extension of the transition period. Laura Kuenssberg suggested that many MPs would be extremely concerned about the proposed extension period. Katya Adler said the EU wanted the UK to sign up to the Ireland backstop, but Theresa May was refusing to do so. The impasse was thus continuing and this had led to eye- rolling and dejection among EU leaders. They were also frustrated at having to allocate ‘taxpayers money’ to Brexit and having to do contingency planning for no deal and lorry parks.

October 19: Gavin Lee suggested that Theresa May had a new conundrum over the proposed transition period because the BBC Reality Check team had found it would cost money to stay in the EU and because the Northern Ireland backstop was likely to stay. Northern Ireland would thus stay in the customs union. He added that Emmanuel Macron now believed that ‘no deal’ was more probable, although he had also said UK citizens would be able to have visas to travel to the France. Ben Wright suggested Mrs May was feeling lonely because her party seemed united against her extension plan, with figures such as Dominic Grieve claiming Brexit was a disaster. Katya Adler said the tone of the EU following Mrs May’s proposals was cautious, they wanted a deal but would not cross red lines. She claimed that Jacob Rees-Mogg’s proposal for the Irish border was more problematical than Mrs May’s because there would be customs checks on the Irish mainland border.

BUSINESS NEWS

Two business news guests said they saw clear opportunities for expansion as a result of Brexit. In addition, a house building company chief executive poured scorn on a Bank of England post-Brexit forecast which suggested there could be a fall in house prices of 35 per cent.

This optimistic approach to Brexit prospects was, however, more than offset by negative comment. A business guest (17/9) flagged Brexit-related problems of uncertainty, and in the same programme, a financial commentator noted that Unilever was moving its HQ to ‘Europe’ (meaning the EU area), on 18/9, it was reported that Jaguar believed that Brexit was negatively impacting the sale of diesel cars. Dominic O’Connell (20/9) said that

42

Ryanair was driving to take voting rights off UK shareholders to meet the EU’s airline nationality rules. The following day (21/9), the chief executive of a robotics company said he was moving his HQ away from the UK to the Netherlands; and on 18/10 Dominic O’Connell stressed disproportionately that a report on ‘passporting’ by a law firm underlined that Brexit was causing serious problems in the City and could lead to job losses.

September 17: Business News: report on how small businesses were preparing for Brexit. A contributor was worried about ‘not knowing’ and extra costs, and said things had become difficult since the Brexit vote. The markets guest also warned of negative impact, and noted Unilever was moving its HQ to Europe. 7.20am (business update): Julian Harrison, a house builder CEO, said that the Bank of England’s stress-test of a 35 per cent fall in house prices was not going to happen. He said confidence drove the house market, and Brexit was not the only determinant.

September 18: 6.15am (business news): Russ Mould reported that both Brexit and reduced demand for diesels might have impacted sales of Jaguar cars in the UK and China. Emma Pullen, MD of the British Hovercraft Company, said she was very positive about international sales after Brexit.

September 19: 6.15am (business news): Stephen Britt, of Anchor Storage, said he believed Brexit offered big opportunities. ‘No deal’ would lead to lower customs tariffs and lower prices, and open up links to the rest of the world. There would be the chance to get away from EU protectionism.

September 20: Julianne Ponan, director of Creative Nature – makers of snack bars – said she was making deals further afield, such as in Australia, but EU tariffs could be an issue for them. Dominic O’Connell said there was a drive at Ryanair to take voting rights off UK national shareholders after Brexit ‘to meet airline nationality rules’. Ashley Hamilton-Claxton, of Royal London Asset Management, said he was opposed to the plan because it was counter to good governance. He said that the company should come up with alternative solutions, there was a big question mark about how independent the board was.

September 21: Steven Gray, CEO of a robotics company said that his company was moving its HQ to the Netherlands and would hire staff there. It was said that a report from Engineers’ Employers Federation had found one in four manufacturers had cut back on investment. Dame Judith Hackitt of the EEF, said a sense of urgency needed to be recognised because six months from Brexit, the details were not known. She claimed ‘no deal’ would be catastrophic and a plan was needed to achieve frictionless trade, exactly as it had been for the past 30 years. 43

October 15: Dharshini David asked if the pound was falling as a result of the stalemate in the Brexit talks. The reply was that there had not been, but there could be a bounce in favour of sterling if a deal was reached. The current exchange at $1.31 reflected ‘no deal’ expectations.

October 18: Martha Kearney said that uncertainty about Brexit was making it tough for business. Adam Sopher, who ran a popcorn business said he wanted certainty over tariffs and the cost of ingredients so that he could negotiate better deals. Dominic O’Connell said the uncertainty was especially evident in the City of London, where big financial services firms, banks and the like were ‘particularly exposed to changes. They had special trading arrangement at the moment through ‘passporting’, Emma Rachmaninov, of law firm Freshfields, explained that it allowed free trade in financial services, and companies were no hoping that a deal granting equivalence or ‘equivalence plus’ would be achieved. There was a danger that banking would not be covered. Freshfields had been advising on how it could be achieved through other arrangements, but they wanted to maintain contractual continuity Dominic O’Connell suggested they wanted to operate in London still because it was a pain to move. Ms Rachmaninov said they were looking at restructuring. Mr O’Connell said:

There’s been a whole spate of announcements by big banks saying, ‘Okay, we’re going to move this little bit of business to Dublin or to Paris or to Frankfurt’, has that amounted to actually many people leaving London, because it tends to be small groups of important people, that’s my impression anyway?

ER: I think it, again, it depends entirely on the nature of the business, the clients to which they provide services and how they are set up currently. I think the starting position, you’re right, is that people want to preserve existing arrangements insofar as possible, and that goes to the continuity operations point. They are accepting that there may need to be some level of changes to those arrangements in order to keep the second point, the access to the EU market. But I think, generally, people are looking at, in quite some detail, as to how those services are provided. The EU regulators, obviously, have a very keen interest in making sure that what people aren’t doing is simply setting up what they call a letterbox.

(Dominic O’Connell’s question was at odds with a Reuters report24: of September 25 which said that a survey among City firms had shown that surprisingly few financial companies were relocating jobs outside London.)

Mr O’Connell suggested that the ‘big problem’ was that the shape of the final deal was not known. Ms Rachmaninov said the company was concentrating on dealing with worst case

24 https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-city-exclusive/exclusive-with-six-months-to-go-before-brexit-630-finance-jobs- have-left-reuters-survey-idUKKCN1M60P4 44 scenarios. Mr O’Connell then asked markets guest Russ Mould if he got the impression that the City was emptying out, with everyone heading for Paris or Frankfurt. He added that there had been a fear of a giant exodus of tens of thousands of people leaving. Mr Mould said a lot of contingency planning was going on and select numbers of teams were moving, but at the moment it as at the contingency stage.

‘NO DEAL’ NEGATIVITY

As noted in the section on ‘framing’ of journalistic issues, an important feature of the survey period was highly negative attitudes towards ‘no deal’ from both programme guests and BBC staff. So prevalent were such opinions that they were a dominant theme. A very small number of programme guests were positive about ‘no deal’, but their voices were virtually drowned out. The heavy majority of programme guests viewed the prospect as an outcome to be avoided at all costs, and that a deal with the EU involving compromise on the terms – mostly including the acceptance of EU rules – must be reached. Typical were:

 Cabinet minister Jeremy Hunt (who supported the Chequers outcome) claimed ‘no deal’ would result in the loss of a million jobs and cause ‘significant damage’ to economies within the UK and in the EU itself

 Former Labour leader David Miliband alleged it would be a ‘terrible disaster for the country’

 Former Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg protested that ‘no deal’ was an ‘abyss’ and that to even suggest such an outcome was ‘an insult to voters’.

 Prominent pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller asserted that even ‘Leavers’ were now saying that ‘no deal’ would be ‘catastrophic’.

 Georgios Katrougalos, Greece’s Europe minister, claimed that ‘no deal’ would be ‘a very, very bad conclusion’ to the negotiations.

 Dame Judith Hackitt, the chair of the Engineers’ Employers Federation (EEF), asserted that ‘no deal’ would be catastrophic for her industry and ‘seriously damaging’ to British manufacturing.

45

 Irish deputy prime minister Simon Coveney said the prospect of ‘no deal’ was very, very concerning and would be negative for both the UK and Ireland.

This huge negativity was compounded at every level by BBC correspondents and presenters. With only minor exceptions – when posing a few devil’s advocate questions – they reflected and at times amplified the attitudes programme guests that ‘no deal’ was to be avoided at all costs and would result in ‘total chaos’. The editorial framework could thus be described as overwhelmingly ‘anti-no deal’. Examples were:

 Europe editor Katya Adler said categorically that all EU trade agreements and airline safety agreements would be compromised by ‘no deal’.

 Economics editor Kamal Ahmed asserted that the closer the UK was to the EU, the less damaging it would be for the EU, and claimed this was supported by ‘overwhelming forecasts’ from economists such as the IMF and the LSE. He said negative impacts of ‘no deal’ would be rising prices and obstacles to trade.

 Mishal Husain asked whether President Macron wanted to administer a shock to the UK by contending that Chequers was unworkable and the alternative was ‘no deal’.

 Katya Adler also asserted that the prospect of ‘no deal’ was looming large and this was problematic for the EU. She claimed that this was because the IMF report just published indicated that the economic damage would not just be huge for the UK but across the EU as well.

 Political editor Laura Kuenssberg speculated that if there was ‘no deal’, the negative economic effects would be felt ‘extremely quickly’ and could possibly feel like ‘total chaos’.

Below are laid out the mentions of ‘no deal in two parts. The first is the sequential log. The second divides the mentions into separate categories a) those by BBC presenters and correspondents, and b) those by programme guests. This illustrates the extent of comment from a different perspective. Finally, there is a section containing mentions of ‘no deal’ as a ‘crash out’.

September 17: Bulletins said that Theresa May had laid out in a Panorama interview that the only alternative to Chequers was ‘no deal’. Chris Mason said Mrs May had suggested there was binary choice between her deal and ‘no deal’. Dominic O’Connell suggested in business news

46 that the UK was inching away from a ‘no deal’ Brexit. His ‘markets guest’ said that ‘no deal’ would lead to higher tariffs, more restrictions and a greater period for readjustment for business. At 6.32am, Nick Robinson repeated that Mrs May had said it was ‘my deal or no deal’. Norman Smith said that Theresa May had made it clear that for her it was either Chequers or nothing at all. This was bracketed with that Boris Johnson had made another intervention similar to that of his suicide vest remarks. Chris Morris in a Reality Check said the Institute of Government were warning that no deal would have serious negative consequences. This was repeated in a 7am bulletin item. A spokesman for the Austrian government said that no deal should be avoided at all costs. Bernard Jenkin said that no deal was preferable to Chequers because the UK would be instantly free and would save money on EU contributions. It was put to him that there was a binary choice between ‘no deal’ and Chequers. He rebutted the idea that Jaguar would lose £1.2 billion if there was ‘no deal’. Mr Jenkins’ claims about ‘no deal’ were mentioned briefly in the 8am bulletin. In business news update, Julian Harrison rejected Mark Carney’s claim, put to him by Dominic O’Connell, that house prices would fall by 35 per cent if there was a ‘no deal’ Brexit. In his intro to an interview with Theresa May at 8.10am, Nick Robinson speculated that Mrs May failed in his attempts to reach a deal, ‘Britain might simply fall over that cliff edge which has been talked of for so long, leaving the EU with no deal at all’. Mr Robinson asked Mrs May who she felt that if there was ‘no deal’, Mark Carney had predicted that house prices might fall by a third. Mrs May did not respond directly but said that the government must prepare to work out the disruption caused by ‘no deal’. After the interview, Nick Robinson asked Laura Kuenssberg whether the choice was deal or ‘no deal’. She responded that Mrs May now expected to have a deal by the end of November and there would be only two options ‘back her deal, or kill it off, which could lead to huge uncertainty and chaos’. At 8.32am, Matthew Price interviewed Nick Clegg, and noted that some were beginning to warn of a ‘blind’ Brexit with no certainty of what the deal would look like. Nick Clegg said Theresa May’s idea of a binary choice (Chequers v. ‘no deal’) was nonsense – the idea that the country should accept a fudge or an abyss was an insult to voters. He asserted it was nonsense , and the need was thus for a people’s vote. At 8.50am, Nick Robinson, in a sequence with Rachel Sylvester and Polly Toynbee, repeated that Theresa May said it was Chequers or ‘no deal’, and that Nick Clegg had described that as ‘fudge or abyss’. Later on, Mr Robinson said that Mrs May could say that there was a countdown to an ‘unappealing no deal’.

September 18: Norman Smith said that following warnings from the IMF and Philip Hammond the Commons Brexit Committee had sounded yet another warning against ‘no deal’, and was recommending that the UK stay in the single market. They had also suggested that in the aftermath of ‘no deal’ there would be a profoundly damaging effect on goodwill between the UK and the EU and had pointed to evidence given by Michel Barnier that if there was ‘no deal’ there would be no further discussions, no negotiations, no talking and contingency plans would be put in place. Overall, they had said the ramifications of ‘no deal’ could be quite a 47 lot more serious and the solution was to stay in the customs union. In an interview with Vince Cable, he asserted that he doubted that, except from a few hardliners, there was support for ‘no deal’ and asserted that it would cause ‘massive disruption’. John Humphrys did not challenge his claim. Mr Cable later suggested that a ‘no deal’ Brexit would be worse than staying in the EU, and added that people were changing their minds about leaving as a result. Again, Mr Humphrys did not challenge him. An extract from Mr Cable’s claims were used in subsequent news bulletins. At 8.46am, Katya Adler said about ‘no deal’:

And another reason to make a deal is the prospect of what would happen in the short and medium term. If we don’t, the UK businesses that currently export to the EU, all the goods that are manufactured, backwards and forwards across EU and UK borders, airline safety agreements, I mean, if no deal is in place after exit, these will be compromised to say the least. Now the fact, Mishal that the EU worries about our ‘no deal’ scenario is leverage for the UK negotiations, but the EU believes it’s in a stronger position.

In the same sequence, Kamal Ahmed said that if the UK had ‘no deal’ and went to WTO rules, it would fundamentally change the UK’s relationship with the rest of Europe. He claimed that the overwhelming number of economic forecasts said this would have ‘a negative effect on the economy’. He added that the ‘overwhelming forecast from the London School of Economics’ , and what the IMF had said the previous day, was that :

. . .the closer we are to the European Union, the less damaging that will be for the UK and the EU economy. So, as close to steady state as possible is seen as the best option for the economy. But most of the judgements, the forecasts are that whatever the new relationship is with the European Union, in economic terms, and just economic terms, it will be less good than the relationship we have now. And that is around the things that Katya touched on, of course – trade relationships, also this issue about the value of the pound, a decline in the value of the pound, investors might see better opportunities elsewhere, that means the demand for sterling falls, the value of sterling therefore falls and that means our imports, we import 40% of our fuel, 40% of our food, they become more expensive, that pushes up inflation, that pushes up prices, and that means that consumers can be affected by the fact that the price of what they buy can go up.... if the, if the deal is worse than the markets are expecting at this stage, you could imagine that sterling would fall further, and as I say, that would feed through to prices. The other issues that will be affected are much more on things like the type of regulations, travelling to Europe, being a tourist in Europe, will there be more bureaucracy, will there be more form-filling, how . . . how much of that will remain seamless as it is now? I think one thing worth saying though, a lot of what we might describe as the Brexit effect is already priced in. What I mean by that is after the referendum sterling fell dramatically, inflation, prices went up. If there is a deal around Chequers or, in economic terms, seen as a slightly better than Chequers, i.e. it’s a bit closer to the European Union, as Mark Carney has said, has argued, we could actually see a boost to where the UK economy is at the moment, because we have already taken quite a hit because of the results of the referendum. And if the deal is seen as a good deal by the markets, by investors, i.e. closer deal, then we could see a boost to the economy from where we are now. . .The economics of this will be very long-term. The effects of this will be very long-term, and depending on what type of deal we get with the European Union, that will affect us for years, probably decades ahead. This is a huge 48

change. 40 years of relationship with the European Union being unwound, that is going to have a substantial economic effect.

Laura Kuenssberg was then asked to comment. She said:

Well, who knows, frankly, and I think it’s going to be a long time after March next year unless, of course, there is ‘no deal’ and no withdrawal agreement. That, as the other two have been suggesting would be felt extremely quickly in a variety of ways. And it might possibly feel like total chaos.

September 19: Nick Robinson explained that campaigners for a ‘People’s Vote’ were claiming that they were a third option in the deal/no deal stakes. Iain Watson speculated that ‘Tory Remainers’ would more likely vote against the prime minister if there was a ‘no deal’ scenario’, but that possibility was ‘receding a little bit’. Mr Watson added that People’s Vote campaigners appeared to be coming out in favour of a ballot paper which said simply Remain or ‘no deal’. In business news, Stephen Britt, a storage company boss, said that ‘no deal’ would perhaps create more opportunity to change customs tariffs and lead to reduced prices. He also said that EU ‘protectionism’ prevented the dumping of goods by the Chinese. In the 7am bulletin, Laura Kuenssberg reported remarks by Justine Greening that the prime minister’s suggestion of forcing an ‘deal or no deal’ vote was false and divisive. Iain Watson claimed in the bulletin that the People’s Vote believed if there was ‘no deal’, a new referendum could be called. In an interview sequence about the likely course of the Salzburg summit, Georgios Katrougalos, Greece’s Europe minister, claimed that ‘no deal’ would be a very, very bad conclusion to the negotiations. In an interview at 8.10am, David Davis said that ‘deal or no deal’ as projected by Theresa May was a false choice, because there were a dozen possible outcomes of negotiations. He added that ‘no deal or World Trade option deal’, which some people were terrified of, but others not, was an option. He explained that the EU had already made a free trade offer which would allow the UK to ‘reset’ the talks.

September 20: Sarah Smith reported in bulletins that Nicola Sturgeon had said that ‘no deal’ was unacceptable. Later, there was a quote from Nicola Sturgeon to that effect. In an interview of Czech Republic Prime Minister, Andrej Babiš, Martha Kearney asked if there were growing fears of ‘no deal’. Mr Babiš said there were hopes of a compromise. Later, Xavier Bettel, prime minister of Luxembourg, said that ‘no deal’ would be a catastrophe for the UK, and there needed to be compromise. Ms Kearney did not challenge him. Katya Adler, in an assessment of how the Salzburg summit had gone, noted that Leo Varadkar, the Irish prime minister had said he wanted to avoid a ‘no deal’, but added he was preparing for it, and also wanted to avoid a ‘hard’ border’.

49

September 21: In bulletins, it was said that Chris Grayling had told Newsnight that the UK was preparing hard for ‘no deal’. In business news, Steven Gray, with a business which serviced windfarms, said that ‘no deal’ would make things ‘much more difficult’ for them because they needed to employ EU nationals. Later in the sequence, Dame Judith Hackitt, chair Engineers’ Employers Federation, discussing a report which suggested one in four businesses had suspended investment because of uncertainty about Brexit, said that ‘no deal’ would be catastrophic for her industry and ‘seriously damaging’ to British manufacturing. She said it was vital that there were no barriers to trade. She conceded that there might be some long term gains, and that businesses would continue to succeed, but the consequences of ‘no deal’ would be businesses moving to other countries, employees losing their job, and disruption to existing supply chains. In the newspaper review, it was said that the Daily Mirror had warned that the UK was in danger of crashing out of the EU with ‘no deal’. In an item about the Irish border ’backstop’, Caroline Thedens MD of an animal bedding company, said he business could have to change its focus of expansion if the was ‘no deal’. In an item about steps towards a People’s Vote the Remain campaigner Gina Miller asserted that even Leavers were now saying that ‘no deal’ would be catastrophic. People had every right to vote again about validating such an outcome. In an interview sequence about the EU negotiations, Mishal Husain asked whether President Macron wanted to deliver a shock to the British people by saying that Chequers was unworkable and that the alternative was ‘no deal’. Bruno Bonnell, of En Marche, replied the worst situation for Britain would be a ‘hard’ Brexit.

September 22: In the bulletins, Gavin Lee reported that although European leaders were confident of a Brexit deal being reached, several governments, including the Danish, Maltese and Swedish, were now stepping up plans for ‘no deal’. In a Reality Check item, Martha Kearney asked Chris Morris if rejection of Chequers did not automatically mean ‘no deal’. He replied:

No, I think it’s really important to emphasise that, I mean, no Chequers doesn’t necessarily mean ‘no deal’. No Chequers makes things much tougher politically for the Prime Minister, but the future economic relationship is not directly part of the negotiations on a withdrawal agreement, which are happening right now, and which need to be concluded in the next few weeks. The way the two are linked, though, is that, obviously, if you have a pretty good idea of what your final destination will be in the future, then it’s easier to persuade MPs to vote in favour of a backstop policy, because you can say it will never have to be used, it is easier for them to vote in favour of paying tens of billions of pounds to the EU to settle past financial commitments, so it’s the politics really which links the two.

Nick Robinson later asked Jean-Claude Piris, a former head of the EU Council’s legal service, whether the ‘drivers’ of the European Union, France Germany and the European Commission’, were willing to have ‘no deal’ rather than to look for a third way between Norway and Canada. Mr Piris replied:

50

It’s impossible for EU and the 27 are very united on that since the beginning to make hara-kiri on the single market. Single market is the heart of the EU, it’s, it’s not possible to ask for a part of it without having all obligations that the member states (word unclear due to speaking over ‘take’?)

NR: (speaking over) Can I just get you to spell that out, sorry to interrupt you, I just want you to spell that out. So any idea of a single market for goods only, which is what Chequers proposes, and a single market for goods that doesn’t involve free movement of people, forget it. It’s not a question of a detail here, you’re saying ‘Forget it’.

JCP: The internal market is global and the united . . . the single market has to be credible. In order to be credible, you have to accept supremacy of EU law, you have to accept the Court of Justice, you have to accept to be put in minority, you have to accept to, to, to, to . . . accept sanctions if you don’t follow correctly and so on.

NR: Okay . . .

JCP: So it’s not possible to ask something partly with all the advantages of the single market on goods and not the obligations.

At 7.41am, it was mentioned in the newspaper review that the Times had a headline that the ‘defiant May’ had raised the stakes with the threat of a ‘no deal’. Martha Kearney asked David Miliband what he made of Mrs May’s statement in Salzburg raising the prospect of ‘no deal’. Mr Miliband replied that ‘no deal’ would obviously be a ‘terrible disaster’ for the country. He added:

We are now in a situation where the contradictions and the delusions of Brexit are coming home to roost. There is no Brexit where you can have the benefits of the European Union without living by their rules. So I now think that, actually there will in the end be a paper- thin deal that the Prime Minister is able to eke out, and she’ll then use the threat of ‘no deal’ and the disaster that that represents to try and bludgeon people to support it.

He was asked by Ms Kearney what Labour should do about this. He said Labour had been complacent and there was a dereliction of duty that the Labour leadership was not pursuing a referendum on whatever deal was agreed. In an introduction to an interview with Jeremy Hunt, Ms Kearney noted that the French minister for Europe had noted that his country must prepare for ‘no deal’, and that Angela Merkel had claimed that the impact of ‘no deal’ on Germany would be ‘relatively small’. After Jeremy Hunt later claimed that ‘no deal’ could lead to the loss of one million jobs in Europe, Ms Kearney suggested that Mrs Merkel had claimed there would only be a ‘small’ impact on the German market. Mr Hunt replied that forecasts said there would be significant damage particularly on countries bordering the UK and the need was to avoid that by getting the correct deal. Ms Kearney later asked whether he was ‘revving up the situation’ in talking about the negative effects of ‘no deal’. Mr Hunt replied that

51 if there was no deal, WTO rules of trading would apply and though it would be bumpy, the UK would survive. Ms Kearney replied:

Wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t it be more than a bit bumpy? I mean, let’s hear some stern warnings about a ‘no deal’ Brexit, ‘it would have a profound impact on relations between Britain and EU countries for a generation’,’ a huge geostrategic mistake’, ‘leaving without a deal would be a mistake we’d regret for generations, if we were to see a fissure, if we have a messy, ugly divorce’, and ‘the consequences of ‘no deal’, the only person rejoicing would be Putin.’ Now I imagine those criticisms . . .

JH: (speaking over) I recognise my own words there.

MK: Well, well exactly, so that’s . . . it’s more than bumpy, isn’t it?

JH: Well, it would be bumpy, and you know we have a . . . had a partnership between Britain and continental European countries since the Second World War that has delivered more peace and prosperity than at any time in our history, and that has worked because Britain and its partners in Europe have been working together, standing shoulder to shoulder against the big challenges of the time, and that’s what we want to continue. But I’ve also always been clear that in the situation where it’s not possible to come to a deal, Britain will find a way to flourish and prosper and we certainly would. But I don’t think it would be the right thing . . .

Ms Kearney responded that colleagues such as Penny Mordaunt believed that the EU’s behaviour meant that people, and even those who voted Remain, were content to go without one. Mr Hunt replied it was time that the EU stepped back from the edge of the abyss and accepted what the UK wanted. Ms Kearney asked why instead of risking the prospect of crashing out with ‘no deal’, the UK did not go instead for a Canada-style deal, which a French politician had said on the programme would be available. Mr Hunt responded that the EU should respect what the UK wanted rather than simply offering an unacceptable alternative. Ms Kearney asked:

But why are you so dismissive of the idea of the kind of free trade agreement which the previous Brexit secretary, David Davis, said was possible, it’s been on the table forever, from the EU perspective, what’s so wrong with that? JH: Well, I’m not dismissing anything, what I’m saying is that if the EU’s view is that just by saying ‘No’ to every proposal made by the United Kingdom, we will eventually capitulate, and end up either with a Norway option or, indeed, staying in the EU, if that is their view then they’ve profoundly misjudged the British people, because . . .

MK: (speaking over) Well, I can understand why you, why you . . .

JH: . . . we may be polite, but we have a bottom line, and so they need to engage with us now, in seriousness, and that’s what Theresa May has been doing with enormous patience. And I think she’s showed extraordinary leadership in the last few days . . .

MK: (speaking over) Well . . .

52

JH: . . . and now is the chance for the EU to step back from the brink . . .

MK: (speaking over) I’m sure she’ll appreciate your loyalty . . .

JH: . . . get these negotiations going, by engaging properly . . .

MK: (speaking over) I’m sure she’ll appreciate what you’re saying, but I find it very interesting that you’re not ruling out the possibility of a Canada-style free trade agreement.

JH: Well we are . . . we have been very clear that we are prepared to negotiate on the Chequers proposal, but, you know, we can’t talk to a void, we have to have a counterparty that’s prepared to sit down and go through the details. We think these proposals are better than the Canada proposals because of the fact that they work better on the Northern Irish border, and that’s the main reason we came up with them. So let’s have a discussion, let’s try and, with a reasonable tone and with a positive mentality, I’ve had messages from two European foreign ministers yesterday, saying that they are convinced that a deal is possible, Donald Tusk also said that yesterday, so let’s, in a positive spirit go forward and try and make this work.

October 15: In business news, Dharshini David suggested to the Alan Custis, the markets guest, that there was currently a ‘deal dividend’ in the valuation if sterling. Mr Custis responded that the current value was reflecting that ‘no deal’ was a potential prospect. If there was a deal, there would be a bounce in the value of sterling. In the 7am bulletins, Adrian O’Neill said that if at this week’s European Council meeting there was not a way forward in the negotiations, they would decide that the November meeting would focus on ‘no deal’ preparations. Katya Adler. Discussing prospects for that day’s negotiations, said that, of course, the possibility of ‘no deal’ hung in the air. Keir Starmer, the Labour Europe spokesman, in response to questions from John Humphrys about Labour’s stance, said they were being asked to support ‘no deal’ which was much worse than what was currently on the table, or, in effect, whatever came back.

October 16: Norman Smith, discussing Theresa May’s negotiating strategy suggested that she was hoping they would accept her proposals because they would blink at the prospect of ‘no deal’. In an item by Ross Hawkins about a Remain campaign meeting, Genevieve Talon said that the group opposed Nigel Farage’s view that ‘no deal’ was an option, and that ‘no deal’ would be a catastrophic option for the country. There was no challenge to this in the item. Katya Adler, discussing the Brexit negotiations, Katya Adler said that Donald Tusk had ‘rather worryingly’ added that a ‘no deal’ Brexit now seemed likelier than ever. Michael Roth, Germany’s Europe minister, said that the EU needed to prepare for the worst-case scenario, a disorderly ‘no deal’ Brexit. Ms Adler asked what the EU could offer to the UK to make a deal easier. Mr Roth replied that the EU was not going to allow itself to be blackmailed or to make any concessions about the single market or the Irish border. The reality was that Germany did not ask for Brexit and

53 did not want it. Ms Adler added that all countries in the EU thought that ‘no deal’ was better for them than a bad deal. She added:

Mr Roth is also representative of EU countries who see Theresa May’s refusal right now to give more and to concede more on the Irish border for example, as a sign of weakness, not in strength in negotiations, assign she’s promised to much to too many back at home. So EU leaders worry that even if they do manage to muddle their way through, and if it’s December this year, to a Brexit deal between the UK and Brussels, they worry the Prime Minister doesn’t have the strength to pull that through back home.

October 17: In an item about the Brexit summit, Adam Fleming suggested that if a further summit was held in November, its purpose, including whether to talk about ‘no deal’ instead, would have to be decided. Norman Smith speculated on the same lines, and suggested that as a result ‘no deal’ was becoming more of a possibility. What mitigated against that was that there had been some progress on Northern Ireland and both sides were still talking. Mishal Husain suggested to Raffaele Trombetta, the Italian Europe minister, that there needed to be flexibility to avoid the chances of ‘no deal’. He replied that the EU side was doing so, but that it was also important for the EU to protect the four freedoms. He denied that the EU was being ‘punishing’ in its stance. In her analysis of the negotiations, Katya Adler said the possibility of ‘no deal’ was looming large, and that was problematic for the EU. She added:

I mean, the IMF had a report out recently that indicated the economic damage wouldn’t just be huge in the United Kingdom, but across the European Union in businesses as well. So, the EU is very mindful of that. And so, we’ve seen the EU move on some of its red lines, the fact that in the negotiations around the Irish border, the EU is countenancing the UK proposal about keeping the whole of the UK in a customs union, whether temporary or not, of course, all of this is being argued about, is breaking their red lines but they wouldn’t talk about the future relationship, when they were dealing with the divorce issues and here we’re talking about the withdrawal agreement, so, the divorce deal.

Irish deputy prime minister Simon Coveney said the prospect of ‘no deal’ was very, very concerning and would be negative for both the UK and Ireland, but from the Irish and EU perspectives, commitments to the Irish border question had to be honoured. John Humphrys asked if there was ‘no deal’, he would be forced to build a wall across Ireland. He replied:

No, I don’t believe that that’s going to happen, but I think if there’s no deal, there are a lot of pressures in a lot of areas, Northern Ireland will be one of them, but there’ll be many other areas also. I think next week you will probably see papers being produced from the EU side on contingency planning for a ‘no deal’ scenario, it’s not a pretty picture, and I think people need to be mature enough to recognise that. I think there’s a lot of . . . inaccurate, macho talk about countries being able to survive a ‘no deal’ Brexit and pushing through and looking forward, and, you know, a lot of generalities. The truth is, that a ‘no deal’ Brexit creates significant problems across multiple areas, economic and political and security and so on, and so we have an 54 obligation, Britain and Ireland in particular, but also the EU and the UK, to find a way here that we can settle on a deal that manages a sensible Brexit, respects the decision of the British people, but at the same time also respects the complexity and the potential problems that Britain’s decision to leave the European Union has caused outside of the United Kingdom, in particular in your closest neighbour, who are more vulnerable than any other EU state to the fallout of Brexit. And what I am looking for, through these negotiations, and I trust Michel Barnier to deliver this, is a fair outcome here to the UK that respects the sovereign integrity of the United Kingdom as a whole, including Northern Ireland, but that also recognises that Northern Ireland is different to other parts of the United Kingdom, and that difference needs to be recognised and certain things need to be protected through Brexit. And that’s why we are so insistent on the backstop . . .

Laura Kuenssberg speculated that everyone was travelling without a map and suggested that there would not be a majority in Parliament for allowing the UK to leave the EU on a ‘crash out’ basis with no proper plans in place (and thus avoiding ‘no deal’). John Humphrys asked whether – because Article 50 had been triggered – the UK ‘had to get out’, deal or no deal. Ms Kuenssberg replied that this was the theory but the practice could end up being very different. Lord Ricketts said that no others wanted ‘no deal’ and thus the need was to be pragmatic, so Theresa May needed to break the deadlock to reach a deal in November or at the ‘drop-dead crunch time’ in December. He added that it did not seem that the EU was set on ‘no deal’. Katie Balls from The Spectator commented that no deal looked more likely than ever, and it needed to be a friendly ‘no deal’ rather than a bad-tempered one. John Humphrys said ‘wooh’ (presumably in astonishment) and asked Ms Balls to define a friendly ‘no deal’. She said it would include basic agreements and not be the kind of ‘cliff-edge’ that people talked about. Lord Ricketts said:

Well, I think when people look into the abyss of ‘no deal’, they’re going to see that it’s really terrible for all sides including the EU, and therefore we’ve got to find some pragmatic way of getting a deal, buying some more time, before we sort out the final relationship.

He added that he believed Theresa May was capable of achieving a deal.

October 18: Bulletins said that Parliament might only have a choice between accepting whatever Mrs May negotiated and ‘no deal’. In the newspaper review, it was said that Le Figaro described the summit as being ‘haunted’ by the prospect of ‘no deal’. Die Welt in Germany had reported that Europe was now even closer to ‘no deal’. At 6.11am, Martha Kearney suggested that the prospect of ‘no deal’ was closer, and then again at 6.33am in a question to Helen McEntee, Ireland’s Europe Minister, who posited that Theresa May’s requested extension period was a good idea but had to be negotiated. Ms McEntee did not think it was because Michel Barnier

55 thought progress was being made. In an interview, Nick Boles MP suggested that ‘no deal’ would be chaos and feared it was being foisted on the UK. In her interview with Alexandre Holroyd of the French En Marche party, Martha Kearney first asked him if ‘no deal’ was closer as the French government had published a draft law about visas for UK citizens. Mr Holroyd said the government had not done that, it had taken enabling powers to legislate in the event of ’no deal’, in line with what other members were doing. Ms Kearney then said that in an effort to avoid ‘no deal’, the government was proposing for the whole of the UK to stay in the customs union temporarily. Mr Holroyd said that dealing with that was up to Michel Barnier. Katya Adler commented:

we know that the EU worries very much about ‘no deal’ it will be costly and chaotic for them as well – well according to the Austrian Prime Minister it’s going to take weeks, possibly even months and we are hearing today inside the European Commission building, they're quite relaxed about taking a vote on it and deciding a deal as late as March, because they feel they've kept the European Parliament on side, they worry about the shifting sands in UK politics.

Martha Kearney, interviewing David Lidington, said EU countries were taking the prospect of ‘no deal’ much more seriously. Mr Lidington replied that sensible contingency plans were being made. Ms Kearney put the ‘no deal’ point also to Stephanie Bolzen and she concurred that plans were being stepped up in Germany.

October 19: Bulletins included a sequence hinged on that ‘one of the world’s largest ferry operators’ had warned that a ‘no deal’ Brexit could affect food supplies in the UK and diminish trade. There was a quote from a Stena Line spokesman, who said that anxiety was high and a concern was that trade between Ireland to the continent would miss out on the UK as a land bridge. In a report from the summit, Gavin Lee said that Emmanuel Macron had told him, in effect, that no deal was a greater possibility and that it was still being planned for. He added that there was confusion about whether visas for those travelling between the UK and France would be required. In Yesterday in Parliament, a clip was included from Sir Edward Leigh asking if the government would ensure that if there was a ‘no deal’ Brexit would not be delayed. At 7.16am, Martha Kearney stressed that ‘one if the world’s largest ferry companies’ had warned that ‘no deal’ could hit food prices and trade, with the UK being by-passed. Ross Hawkins reported that Ian Davies, of Stena, was not just worried about friction at the Irish border if there was ‘no deal’ but also that the EU’s suggested backstop could lead to extra checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea. Mr Davies was quoted as wanting from the government clear guidelines about customs arrangements. Mr Hawkins asked if there was not such clarity, it would add to the risk of ‘huge tailbacks’ at ports, and ‘all those things people want to avoid’. Mr Davies agreed that it would because there would be significant delay every day. Mr Hawkins asked if it could hit UK food supplies. Mr Davies said he believed it would, and in answer to a further question, that there was very little readiness for these problems. Mr Hawkins then asked whether 56 new customs software which ministers could deal with ‘no deal’ was actually capable of doing so. Mr Davies said there were problems because the software had not been built for this purpose, and there were doubts about its stability. Mr Hawkins concluded that many in business no longer shared a sense of optimism or patience.

MENTIONS OF ‘NO DEAL’ BY BBC STAFF

This section separates out from the running log above the specific comments about ‘no deal’ by BBC staff.

Katya Adler said categorically (18/9) that all EU trade agreements and airline safety agreements would be compromised by ‘no deal. Kamal Ahmed, in the same sequence, said the closer the UK was to the EU, the less damaging it would be for the EU and claimed this was supported by ‘overwhelming forecasts’ from economists such as the IMF and the LSE. He said negative impacts of ‘no deal’ would be rising prices and obstacles to trade. Continuing the analysis, Laura Kuenssberg speculated that if there was ‘no deal’, the negative economic effects (as outlined by Kamal Ahmed) would be felt ‘extremely quickly’ and could possibly feel like ‘total chaos’. Norman Smith (18/9)) said that the Brexit Select Committee had sounded yet another warning against ‘no deal’ and was recommending that the UK should stay in the single market. Mr Smith added that the committee had also claimed that ‘no deal’ would seriously damage goodwill between the UK and the EU, and he noted that Michel Barnier had warned that in the event of ‘no deal’, there would be no further discussions and contingency plans would be put in place. He had said ‘no deal’ would be serious and the solution was to stay in the customs union. Mishal Husain (21/9) asked whether President Macron wanted to administer a shock to the UK by contending that Chequers was unworkable and the alternative was ‘no deal’; Chris Morris (22/9) contended that ‘no’ to Chequers would not necessarily lead to ‘no deal’; Martha Kearney (22/9) suggested to Jeremy Hunt (using his own words from an earlier speech) that ‘no deal’ would be a ‘profound impact’, and ‘a huge geostrategic mistake’, the only beneficiary of which would be President Putin; Katya Adler (15/10) said that the possibility of ‘no deal’ hung in the air (implied as being a threat); Dharshini David (15/10), in business news, suggested there was currently a ‘deal dividend’ in the valuation of sterling; Norman Smith (16/10) opined that Theresa May was hoping that EU negotiators would accept her latest proposals because they would blink at the prospect of ‘no deal’; Katya Adler (16/10) observed that ‘rather worryingly’, Donald Tusk had suggested that ‘no deal’ was likelier than ever; Ms Adler (also 16/10) asserted that all countries in Europe thought that ‘no deal’ was preferable to a bad deal and that Germany’s Europe minister, Michael Roth, believed Theresa May’s refusal to concede more over the Irish border was a sign of weakness, indicative of that she had made

57 too many concessions at home; Norman Smith(17/10) said that ‘no deal’ was becoming more of a prospect, though ‘mitigating’ against that was that progress had been made on Northern Ireland; Mishal Husain (17/10) suggested to Raffaele Trombetta, Italy’s Europe minister, that there needed to be flexibility to avoid the prospect of ‘no deal’; Katya Adler (17/10) said the prospect of ‘no deal’ was looming large and this was problematic for the EU. She claimed that this was because the IMF report just published indicated that the economic damage would not just be huge for the UK but across the EU as well; John Humphrys (17/10) asked Irish deputy prime minister Simon Coveney if there was ‘no deal’, he would be forced to build a wall across Ireland; Laura Kuenssberg (17/10) said the problem was that everyone was travelling without a map with no proper plans for dealing with ‘no deal’; Martha Kearney (18/10) suggested to Ireland’s Europe minister Helen McEntee that the prospect of ‘no deal’ was closer; Katya Adler (18/10) said that the EU worried very much about ‘no deal’ and suggested that it would be ‘costly and chaotic’ for them as well; Martha Kearney (18/10) suggested to David Lidington that EU countries were taking the prospect of ‘no deal’ very seriously, and he replied that the government was taking steps; Ms Kearney also suggested (18/10) to journalists Stephanie Bolzen that Germany was stepping up its ‘no deal’ plans. She concurred that it was; bulletins (19/10) included warnings from the BBC (through a specially-complied report on the ‘no deal’ prospects) and Stena that ‘no deal’ would lead to escalating food prices and end the UK’s role as a land bridge between Ireland and the UK; Martha Kearney stressed in a link (19/10) that one of the world’s biggest ferry companies was warning about the impact of ‘no deal’ including food price rises; Ross Hawkins (19/10), in his special report about Stena, said the company was worried that ‘no deal would lead to friction at the Irish border, and customs checks in the Irish Sea’. He asked the Stena spokesman if, in the event of ‘no deal’, there would be huge tailbacks at ports, as well as ‘all the things that people want to avoid’

Mentions of ‘no deal’ by programme guests opposed to it included: Nick Clegg (17/9) described ‘no deal’ as an ‘abyss’; Jill Rutter (17/9), of the Institute of Government – though not specifically mentioning ‘no deal’- said that whichever type of leave was agreed upon presented tremendous difficulties. She said the ‘cliff-edge’ scenario (envisaged by Nick Robinson) would depend on the extent that the EU was prepared to play ball in terms of keeping planes flying. The task was daunting for the civil service; Vince Cable (18/9), who asserted that ‘no deal’ would cause ‘massive disruption’; Nicola Sturgeon (20/9), who asserted that a ‘no deal outcome was ‘unacceptable’ and tantamount to jumping off a cliff (her phrase was then used in a news bulletin); Steven Gray (21/9), a wind- farm business executive, contended that ‘no deal’ would make things much more difficult because his company needed EU labour; Dame Judith Hackitt, of the Engineers’ Employers’ Federation (21/9), said that ‘no deal’ would be catastrophic for her industry, would seriously damage British manufacturing, and lead to companies relocating; Gina Miller (21/9) also asserted that ‘no deal’ would be catastrophic; David Miliband (22/9) contended that ‘no deal’ would be a 58 terrible disaster for the country, and claimed Theresa May was using that prospect to ‘bludgeon’ people into supporting her approach; Jeremy Hunt (22/9) – against claims put by Martha Kearney that Angela Merkel believed that ‘no deal’ would not have a big impact on Germany – said that he believed ‘no deal’ would lead to the loss of one million jobs in Europe, and the impact would be especially bad on countries bordering the UK; Keir Starmer (15/10) claimed that ‘no’ deal’ was worse than anything currently on the table; Remain/second referendum campaigner Genevieve Talon (16/10) asserted that ‘no deal’ would be catastrophic for the country; Lord Ricketts (17/10) suggested that people would look into the ‘abyss’ of no deal and conclude it was ‘really terrible’ for all sides; Nick Boles (18/10) suggested that the impact of ‘no deal’ would be chaos and feared it was being ‘foisted upon the UK’; Ian Davies(19/10), spokesman for Stena, warned that with ‘no deal’ there would be huge tailbacks at ports and significant delay there every day. He confirmed there would be food shortages and price rises and claimed that new customs software being advocated by supporters of ‘no deal’ would not work.

In addition, forecasts of a very negative impact of ‘no deal’ came from European leaders, including Georgios Katrougalos, Greece’s Europe minister (18/9) who said that a ‘no deal conclusion would be ‘very, very bad’; Leo Varadkar (20/9), the prime minister of Ireland; Xavier Bettel (20/9), and the prime minister of Luxembourg, who said that ‘no deal’ would be a catastrophe for the UK, and it therefore needed to compromise in its demands. Bruno Bonnell (21/9), of en Marche, contended that the worst situation for the UK would be ‘no deal’, or ‘hard Brexit’; Jean-Claude Piris, former head of the EU’s legal service (22/9), said that to avoid ’no deal’, the EU 27 were not prepared to commit hari-kari on the single market; Michael Roth, Germany’s Europe minister(16/10), said the worst case scenario was a disorderly ‘no deal’ and said his country was now making preparations for it because they would not be blackmailed into making further concessions; Irish deputy prime minister Simon Coveney (17/10) said the prospect of ‘no deal’ was very, very concerning and would be negative for both the UK and Ireland. He added that the consequences would be ‘a lot of pressures’ and not a pretty picture. There was a lot of macho, inaccurate talk about being able to survive ‘no deal’, but the truth was it created significant problems across economic, political, security (‘and so on’) areas because Ireland was especially vulnerable to the fallout of Brexit; Martha Kearney (18/10), suggested to Alexandre Holroyd of En Marche that ‘no deal’ might be closer and he responded that enabling legislation had been tabled to deal with the possibility.

In addition to specific mentions of ‘no deal’ negativity, there were also instances of the use of ‘crash out’ as a term to describe the alternative to the Chequers deal.

59

Laura Kunssberg (20/9) outlined that Remainers believed that ‘crashing out’ with no arrangements in place would simply be too risky. Dominic Grieve said that he was absolutely determined not to ‘crash out’ of the EU without a deal. Katya Adler said that Theresa May would claim that crashing out without a deal would be costly for business in both the UK and Europe. Martha Kearney asked Jeremy Hunt whether instead of raising the prospect of crashing out under a ‘no deal’ the UK should not go for a Canadian-style deal. Caroline Flint contended that Jacob Rees-Mogg wanted to crash out without a deal. Laura Kuenssberg speculated that parliament would not allow the UK to crash out without a deal.

The most extreme examples of BBC fears about ‘no deal’ were:

Nick Robinson (September 17) suggested that if Theresa May failed to reach a deal with the EU, the UK ‘might simply fall over the cliff edge’. He also suggested to Mrs May that if this happened house prices, according to the Bank of England, could fall by 35 per cent. Laura Kuenssberg opined afterwards that Mrs May believed that unless her deal was backed, there would be huge uncertainty and chaos.

Nick Clegg (September 17) claimed that Mrs May’s proposition to voters that they should accept her deal or fall into an abyss (‘no deal’), was nonsense. He was not challenged about this. Nick Robinson (September 17) reminded Polly Toynbee and Rachel Sylvester that Nick Clegg had described what was on offer as a ‘fudge or an abyss’ and suggested that Mrs May was claiming there was a countdown to an ‘unappealing no deal’.

Norman Smith (September 18) chose for his daily commentary that the Brexit Select Committee had sounded yet another warning against ‘no deal’ and was recommending that the UK should stay in the single market. Mr Smith added that the Committee had also claimed that ‘no deal’ would seriously damage goodwill between the UK and the EU, and he noted that Michel Barnier had warned that in the event of ‘no deal’, there would be no further discussions and contingency plans would be put in place. He had said ‘no deal’ would be serious and the solution was to stay in the customs union.

PRO-BREXIT SUMMARY, TODAY

The headline in this area is that there were only 30 speakers who can be classed as pro- Brexit, against 91 who favoured a way forward which would involve varying degrees of subservience to EU rules. The running log demonstrates that the bulk of the contributions in this category were less significant, and smaller, than those who were opposed to a decisive Brexit. Of those, only five contributors (Bernard Jenkin, David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith,

60

Jacob Rees-Mogg, and Tim Montgomerie) made substantial points that were negative about either the EU itself or the government’s negotiating stance. Three business news guests saw advantages in the post-Brexit world, one specifically if there was ‘no deal’. In addition, Michael Caine described himself as a Brexiteer and gave a brief flavour of why; and Roger Daltrey, of The Who, said he was ‘pro-Europe’ but anti-Brussels.

The sequential log of pro-Brexit mentions, with associated comments and explanation from BBC staff, is as follows:

September 17: In bulletins, it was noted that Boris Johnson was critical of the Chequers plan. At 7.14am, Bernard Jenkin was interviewed. He said that no deal would be preferable to Chequers, that the EU was listening to the ERG proposals for Northern Ireland whereas Theresa May was not and did not accept the claim expressed by the Chairman of Jaguar, that businesses would lose billions of pounds if there was ‘no deal’. In the 8.10am interview, it was put to Theresa May that Boris Johnson and David Davis believed she was waving a white flag in the negotiations. She denied this was the case. Laura Kuenssberg noted afterwards that some Brexit- supporting MPs were determined to oppose the Chequers plan. In a discussion on the day’s developments, Rachel Sylvester of the Times claimed that Theresa May was angering Tory MPs because she was not taking back control.

September 18: In business news, Emma Pullen, of the British Hovercraft Company, said she was very positive about post-Brexit international sales prospects. In the 7.50am interview sequence hinged on a report about immigration, Nigel Farage said that he wanted immigration policies not to be biased in favour of EU countries. He noted that trade deals with countries other than those in the EU did not also involve obligatory free movement of people. He also claimed that his stance on limiting numbers of immigrants was not based on prejudice but on the vast increase of the influx. He maintained that the majority of people wanted reduced immigration.

September 19: Laura Kuenssberg said in the 7am bulletins that Eurosceptics were continuing to push Theresa May to abandon Chequers. In business news, Stephen Britt, of the Anchor Storage company, said he believed that Brexit offered big opportunities. In his view, ‘no deal’ would be positive because it would lead to lower prices and open new links to the rest of the world. There would also be a chance to get away from EU protectionism. Guglielmo Picchi, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, was unusually positive about Theresa May. He suggested that Chequers was workable, and wanted more compromise from the EU. David Davis (8.09am), previewing likely developments in Salzburg, said the EU would not give much, and would not accept Chequers. He claimed it was not a choice between deal and ‘no deal’, but said that a ‘reset’ was required on the lines of the free trade deal offered by Donald Tusk in March. He denied that ’no deal’ would 61 hit exports. Chequers would not work because it allowed rules to be set in Brussels and would prevent the UK making new trade deals. Mr Davis added that Theresa May was missing out by not using her £39 billion bargaining chip. Mr Davis rejected the idea of a second referendum because he claimed it would allow the EU to offer the worst possible terms.

September 20: In business news, Julianne Ponan, spokesperson for a health food company, discussing post-Brexit prospects, said she was making snack food deals further afield than before, but then added that the imposition of EU tariffs could be an issue if a favourable deal was not reached. There were a series of vox pops from Austria, in which people expressed opposition to levels of immigration. Martha Kearney observed in the item that the Austrian ruling party had Nazi roots. Laura Kuenssberg suggested that the EU had ‘form’ in wanting to hold second referendums. Martha Kearney noted in the 8.10am sequence that proposals from the EU about the Irish border would cut off the UK from Northern Ireland and also that a red line for Theresa May was that the UK could not be subject to the European Court of Justice.

September 21: Bulletins said that David Davis have been ‘emboldened’ to say that a rock solid core of MPs would vote down Chequers. It was mentioned at 6.33am that Chris Grayling had told Newsnight that planning for ‘no deal’ should be intensified. Stena Line director Ian Davies said that long-term, he saw good growth prospects in traffic across the Irish Sea. In an interview with Gina Miller, Justin Webb suggested that the EU’s humiliation of Theresa May led people to want to come out of the EU as quickly as possible. At 8.47am, Iain Duncan Smith maintained that Theresa May had been badly advised if she thought Chequers would be accepted by the EU. The EU had behaved appallingly at Salzburg, especially with the Donald Tusk cake picture. He maintained that the way forward was to follow the EU’s free trade signals.

September 22: In an interview of Jeremy Hunt, Martha Kearney noted that Penny Mordaunt had tweeted that the EU’s behaviour at Salzburg had led to even Remainers wanting to leave the EU. Ms Kearney also asked why Mr Hunt was dismissive of a free trade deal when David Davis believed one was on offer and was possible. Tim Montgomerie (8.53am) welcomed Mrs May’s robust stance at Salzburg but asserted that Chequers was unworkable. He added that most in the Conservative party wanted a free trade deal with the EU and felt the Irish border issue could be deal with by using special software.

October 15: In bulletins, it was said that ‘Brexiteers’ believed that the EU was advocating proposals which would lead to the annexation of Northern Ireland, and that the DUP believed it was not almost inevitable that the UK would leave the EU without a deal. At 6.32am, it was noted that David Davis wanted a firm exit date from the EU. It was also said that Penny Mordaunt was a cabinet minister beginning to wobble over Chequers. At 8.10am, in an interview with Keir Starmer, John Humphrys suggested it would be patriotic for Labour to support a deal 62 acceptable to a large number of people (as was being pursued by Theresa May). He suggested to Mr Starmer that the Labour approach to the EU negotiations would involve staying in; then that Labour was caving into Brussels; that people had voted to leave the EU with no ‘ifs or buts’; that Caroline Flint was saying the alternative to a deal was ‘no deal’; that Mr Starmer wanted the same benefits as would apply if the UK stayed in the EU; and that if the Labour approach to the EU negotiations was adopted, the UK would have no say in framing future regulations.

October 16: Bulletins said the DUP had threatened to paralyse the Parliamentary agenda, but would not vote the government down. Yesterday in Parliament included a question from DUP MP Nigel Dodds asking when the UK would leave the EU, and one from Iain Duncan Smith wanting to know how long the ‘temporary’ transition arrangements would last. In an interview of Conor Burns, described as a ‘Boris Johnson lieutenant’, he was asked why he had taken part in a Brexit meeting in which Nigel Farage had described Theresa May as deceitful. He replied that he had naively thought what the people had voted for would be implemented, but now that prospect was unravelling.

October 17: In an interview of Raffaele Trombetta, the Italian ambassador to the UK, Mishal Husain suggested the EU could be more flexible in its negotiating stance, and that there was a view that the EU was making Brexit as hard as possible to warn off other countries from doing so. Roger Daltrey, of The Who, said he had always been against the construct of Brussels, which he thought was a disaster. He was not against ‘Europe’ at all, it was Brussels. John Humphrys in an interview of Simon Coveney, the Irish Deputy Prime Minister, pushed him on whether he was advocating a system which kept Northern Ireland in the EU and the rest of Britain out of the EU. Mr Humphrys also suggested that Boris Johnson had the backing of public opinion and it was thus necessary that Ireland respected his views. He asked Mr Coveney whether he respected that Northern Ireland was part of the UK. At 8.55am,The Spectator’s Katie Balls suggested that Theresa May had given way on so much that the EU believed if they continued pushing, things like the backstop would happen. She also said she believed it could now be the time to make ‘no deal’ as good as possible.

October 18: Bulletins said that Conservative MPs had accused the government of reneging on promises by proposing an extension to the Brexit transition period to 2022. Bulletins also featured at 8am an excerpt from an interview with Nick Boles in which he attacked the government’s negotiating stance and argued for a ‘Norway’ deal’. Chris Morris in a Reality Check item, said that the proposed extension would involve 33 months of the UK having to obey all EU rules without having a vote, and that the extra cost to the UK would be £10.5 billion. Nick Boles said at 7.09am said the proposed extension period was a ‘desperate’ move which would effectively keep the UK in the EU. He added that the cost would be £18 billion. The alternative was to go for an EEA or EFTA arrangement which would entail lower costs. Mr Boles contended 63 that with an EEA or EFTA deal, Northern Ireland would not be an issue. He claimed that because Theresa May would not budge, the EU was continuing to humiliate her. Martha Kearney, in an interview of Alexandre Holroyd of En Marche, suggested that if France introduced visa requirements for British visitors, it would escalate tension. She also asked him why the EU would not accept Theresa May’s proposal of the UK temporarily staying in the customs union to avoid no deal. Later, Martha Kearney suggested to David Lidington that the extension proposal was politically ‘very fraught’ and said Nick Boles had described it as ‘desperate’. Sir Michael Caine, the actor, asserted that he was a Brexiteer and believed it was better to be a poor master of his fate than being run by someone he did not know. He discounted that exports from the UK would be hit. James Crisp of the Daily Telegraph said at 8.51am that the extension period would be a limbo with waning influence and that, under Chequers, the UK had no representation on the main EU bodies.

October 19: It was said in bulletins that unhappiness among Conservative backbenchers with Theresa May’s proposal for an extension was growing. At 7am, Iain Duncan Smith said he agreed that the government’s negotiating performance was bad. Ben Wright noted at 6.33am that Brexiteers hated the extension proposal because it would cost billions and would keep the UK tied to EU regulations. In Yesterday in Parliament, Sir Edward Leigh asked for a categorical assurance that Brexit would proceed at the end of March. Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore, said he hoped that trading arrangement would continue with the UK after it left the EU, and accepted that the UK would be able to forge new economic/trading deals. Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed that the government’s negotiating with the EU had not been strong and that they had caved in to what the EU wanted. He warned that the extension period would involve paying in to an EU budget in which the UK had had no say in setting, and that there would be no veto, and probably no rebate. Mr Rees-Mogg said the current proposals were kicking the can down the road, instead the government should have asked for a Canada-style trade deal. A free trade deal would also solve the Northern Ireland problem. He claimed the extra spending in the extension period could amount to £55 billion, that the problems now being encountered had been ‘made in Downing Street’ and the bigger picture was being tied to the EU for longer at high expense.

The next sections isolate out these aspects of coverage into different headings:

PRO-BREXIT INTERVIEWS

September 17: Bernard Jenkin said that ‘no deal’ would be preferable to Chequers and dismissed claims that Jaguar would lose billions of pounds if there was ‘no deal’.

64

September 18: Nigel Farage, commenting on a report about immigration, said he wanted rules which did not favour entrants from EU countries and pointed out that trade deals with entities other than the EU did not involve obligatory free movement of people.

September 19: David Davis contended that the EU would not accept Chequers and said the UK should pursue the free trade deal offered by Donald Tusk in March. He denied that ’no deal’ would hit exports. He asserted that Chequers would not work because it allowed rules to be set in Brussels and would prevent new trade deals. Theresa May was missing out on that the UK had a £39 billion bargaining chip. Mr Davis rejected the idea of a second referendum because he claimed it would allow the EU to offer the worst possible terms.

September 21: Iain Duncan Smith maintained that Theresa May had been badly advised if she thought Chequers would be accepted by the EU. The EU had behaved appallingly at Salzburg, especially with the Donald Tusk cake picture. The way forward was to follow the EU’s free trade signals.

September 22: Tim Montgomerie (8.53am) welcomed Mrs May’s robust stance at Salzburg but asserted that Chequers was unworkable. He added that most in the Conservative party wanted a free trade deal with the EU and felt the Irish border issue could be deal with by using special software.

October 16: In an interview of ‘Boris Johnson’s lieutenant’ Conor Burns, Justin Webb asked why he had taken part in a meeting in which Nigel Farage had described Theresa May as deceitful. He replied that he had naively thought what the people had voted for would be implemented, but now it was unravelling.

October 18: Nick Boles25 said at 7.09am said the proposed extension period was a ‘desperate’ move which would effectively keep the UK in the EU. He added that the cost would be £18 billion. The alternative was to go for an EEA or EFTA arrangement which would entail lower costs. Mr Boles contended that with an EEA or EFTA deal, Northern Ireland would not be an issue., He claimed that because Theresa May would not budge, the EU was continuing to humiliate her.

October 19; Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed that the government’s negotiating with the EU had not been strong and that they had caved in to what the EU wanted. He warned that the extension period would involve paying into an EU budget in which the UK had had no say in setting, and

25 Nick Boles has been classed here as ‘pro-Brexit’ in that he disagreed with the Chequers approach and wanted a relationship with the EU which was similar to that of Norway. But many who wanted a clean break from the EU describe the ‘Norway option’ as being not Brexit, because it entails the acceptance of much of the requirements of full EU membership.

65 that there would be no veto, and probably no rebate. Mr Rees-Mogg said the current proposals were kicking the can down the road, instead the government should have asked for a Canada- style trade deal. A free trade deal would also solve the Northern Ireland problem. He claimed the extra spending in the extension period could amount to £55 billion, that the problems now being encountered had been ‘made in Downing Street’ and the bigger picture was being tied to the EU for longer at high expense.

ADDITIONAL PRO-BREXIT POINTS FROM PROGRAMME GUESTS:

September 17: Rachael Sylvester of the Times claimed that Theresa May was angering Tory MPs because she was not taking back control.

September 18: In business news, Emma Pullen, of the British Hovercraft Company, said she was very positive about post-Brexit international sales prospects. But this was balanced by heavier references of uncertainty.

September 19: In business news, Stephen Britt, of Anchor Storage, said he believed Brexit offered big opportunities, including ‘no deal’ – that would lead to lower prices, and open new links to the rest of the world.

September 20: In business news, Julianne Ponan said she was making snack bar deals further afield than before (but then said EU tariffs could be an issue). There were a series of vox pops from Austria, in which people expressed opposition to immigration (set in the context that, according to Martha Kearney, the ruling party had Nazi roots).

September 21: Stena ferry director Ian Davies (adding to his mostly negative remarks noted in previous sections) said that long-term, he saw good growth prospects in traffic across the Irish Sea.

October 17: Roger Daltrey, of The Who, said he had always been against the construct of Brussels, which he thought was a disaster. He was not against ‘Europe’ at all, it was Brussels. His BBC interviewer suggested his views were atypical of the rock community. Katie Balls from the Spectator suggested that Theresa May had given way on so much that the EU believed if they continued pushing, things like the backstop would happen. She also said she believed it could now be the time to make ‘no deal’ as good as possible.

October 18: Sir Michael Caine, the actor, asserted that he was a Brexiteer and believed it was better to be a poor master of his fate than being run by someone he did not know. He discounted 66 that exports from the UK would be hit. James Crisp of the Daily Telegraph said at 8.51am that the extension period would be a limbo with waning influence and that the UK had no representation on the main EU bodies.

BULLETINS

There were very few mentions in the bulletins of the anti-EU, anti-Chequers perspective, or of stories which suggested a positive outcome of Brexit.

September 17: It was said that Boris Johnson was critical of Theresa May’s proposals. In an ‘analysis’ piece at 6.32am, Norman Smith said there had been another flamboyant contribution from Boris Johnson on the lines of his ‘suicide vest’ remarks.

September 18: These contained reference to the Migration Advisory Committee report. There was no reference in the bulletins to Nigel Farage’s claim on the programme that EU preferential treatment should end.

September 19: Laura Kuenssberg’s bulletin report said that Eurosceptics were continuing to push Theresa May to abandon Chequers.

September 21: It was reported that David Davis had been ‘emboldened’ to say that a rock solid core of MPs would vote down Chequers.

October 15: At 8am, Norman Smith said that Brexiteers believed that the latest EU proposals on Northern Ireland would amount to its annexation. It was also noted that the DUP believed that the UK would leave the EU without a deal.

October 16: It was said that the DUP would ‘paralyse’ the Parliamentary agenda if Northern Ireland’s position in the UK was undermined.

October 18: Conservative MPs had accused the government of reneging on promises by the submission of proposals that there could be an extension of the transition period to 2022 with the UK still paying for membership and accepting EU rules. At 8am, it was reported that Nick Boles had suggested on the programme the ‘Norway’ EFTA option for EU exit.

October 19: It was said that unhappiness was growing among Conservatives about Theresa May’s proposals for an extended transition period. The 8am bulletin included agreement from Iain Duncan Smith over criticisms of Mrs May. 67

BBC DEVIL’S ADVOCATE QUESTIONS/COMMENT QUERYING REMAIN/EU PERSPECTIVE

On a few occasions during the survey period, Today presenters and correspondents, challenged anti-Brexit views, and put to guests the perspective of those who wanted a more decisive approach.

September 17: It was put to Theresa May that Boris Johnson and David Davis believed she was waving the white flag.

September 20: Laura Kuenssberg suggested that the EU had ‘form’ in the second referendums domain. In an interview with the president of the Czech Republic, Martha Kearney asked if he would be prepared to ‘hive off’ some of his own country if asked (comparison with Northern Ireland). Ms Kearney suggested to Antonio Tajani, president of the European parliament, that Mrs May believed the EU proposals would cut off Northern Ireland from the UK, and then to Joseph Muscat, Maltese prime minister that red lines for Mrs May included not being subjected to the EU rulebook.

September 21: Justin Webb suggested to Gina Miller that the way Theresa May had been humiliated at Salzburg triggered more people towards wanting to come out of the EU as soon as possible. He also suggested that Labour (Barry Gardiner) believed a second referendum could lead to violence, and that Ms Miller was trying to overturn the referendum result. Mishal Husain suggested to James Brokenshire that the UK would have to accept – rather than Chequers – a Canada or Norway-type deal.

September 22: Martha Kearney suggested to Jeremy Hunt that the EU’s behaviour had triggered Penny Mordaunt into tweeting against it. She asked Mr Hunt why he was dismissive of a Canada-style deal when David Davis believed one was possible.

October 15: John Humphrys suggested to Keir Starmer that the patriotic thing to do for Labour would be to swing behind a deal. He said that staying in the customs union would amount to staying in the EU, that Mr Starmer was ‘caving in’ to Brussels, that people had voted to leave the EU with no ifs or buts, and that Mr Starmer’s approach amounted to EU membership with the EU having no say in framing regulation.

October 17: Mishal Husain suggested to Raffaele Trombetta of Italy that the EU could be more flexible and that there was a view that the EU was making things as difficult as possible. John Humphrys challenged Michael Coveney, the Irish deputy prime minister on the Republic’s

68 approach to the Irish border, wondered, whether he respected that Northern Ireland was part of the UK, and suggested that Boris Johnson had the backing of public opinion, and it was therefore necessary that those views were respected.

October 18: Martha Kearney claimed that the publication of a draft law in France requiring Britons to have visas was escalating things, and asked Alexandre Holroyd of En Marche why he would not accept the UK proposal of temporarily staying in the customs union. Ms Kearney put to David Lidington that the proposed extension of the transition period would entail the UK being tied by EU rules and having to pay an extra £10.8 billion to the EU. She contended that the divorce deal was not yet done and progress was ‘for the birds’ and that ‘no deal’ was a serious prospect.

October 19: Martha Kearney suggested to Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore, that people who supported leaving the EU thought it would allow new economic deals with partners such as Singapore. Ms Kearney, in her interview with Jeremy Hunt, claimed that Mrs May’s position now seemed more perilous, that the EU was unlikely to move ion the Irish backstop, that the transition period brought a whole new set of problems, including the costs, that it could involve staying in the CFP beyond 2020, and that, according to Iain Duncan Smith, the latest proposals amounted to capitulation.

Overall, the ‘decisive Brexit’ approach was represented on the programme, but at a much lower level than their opponents who wanted greater compromise with the EU. The imbalance added up to serious, sustained bias throughout the monitoring period.

69

APPENDIX I: METHODOLOGY

News-watch implements a range of robust analytical tools in its study of news and current affairs output, based on firmly-established academic principles, and involving both quantitative and qualitative components.

The bedrock of the approach is that a selected group of programmes are viewed or listened to in their entirety for a set period of time. A detailed log is compiled, with comprehensive information on all the news items broadcast, their running times and full details of those who contributed, including presenters, correspondents and guest speakers. Individual reports of interest are then fully transcribed and further information is entered into a customised database. This database is constructed around a coding frame piloted during News-watch’s early studies, and collates information on each programme item and contributor, including the number of words spoken by interviewees. This data is used to provide statistical information on the programmes being sampled; the transcripts become the focus of a detailed textual analysis, which focuses on theme, approach, tone and content.

Many inequalities – particularly those which develop over an extended period – are impossible for viewers and listeners to perceive by simply watching a television programme or listening to a radio broadcast. Without a rigorous monitoring framework, discussion of media content can rarely be sustained beyond the speculative or impressionistic. Quantitative research techniques – specifically content analyses – are able to confirm or disconfirm intuitive impressions, through the analysis of specific recurrent elements within a large number of media texts.

News-watch’s analysis measures a number of quantitative variables: how much airtime is given to a particular issue or subject compared to other areas of news; the prominence of particular stories within a programme’s running order; and to investigate which voices are allowed most access to a given debate. Data is cross-referenced with earlier investigations to identify long- term trends. The theoretical concept of most relevance here is that of ‘agenda-setting’ - the hypothesis that while the media may not tell audiences what to think, it may tell them what to think about.26 Quantitative analysis allows News-watch to establish exactly how much time and space is being devoted to specific themes during particular periods, and which arguments are being given precedence in on-air debates.

26 Jensen, A Handbook of Media and Communication Research, Routledge, 2002, p.146 70

Qualitative research methods are less concerned with the statistical measurement of frequency, and more with the matter of how individuals and groups understand and construct meanings from particular media texts. A number of distinct properties may be assessed, including: the overall thematic structure; how interviews are framed using introductions, correspondent reports and soundbites from other speakers; the quality of editorial judgment and content; the lexical decisions of journalists and presenters; and the interplay between interviewer and interviewee. When the monitoring schedule involves televised material, it is also possible to consider how visual signs - camera angles, locations, lighting and graphics – can combine to create a particular meaning. Attention must also be paid to how a particular text operates in its wider context, whether as a component part of an individual programme, as part of a series of reports on the same theme across a number of programmes, or its place within wider social and political discussion and argument, including other media.

Contemporary media studies theory indicates that only by using a number of different analytical tools in tandem can a series of texts be fully and properly assessed, and that when quantitative and qualitative techniques are used in combination, the resultant analysis is invariably stronger.27

News-watch has worked consistently to ensure that its research methods are fair, equitable, thorough, replicable, and take into account new developments in media theory.

27 Deacon et al, Researching Communications, London, Arnold, 1999, p.134 71