Bad Losers

 

 

The Remain losers are out in force though you might never know there was an orchestrated campaign to undermine Brexit if you relied solely on the BBC’s ‘analysis’.

Osborne came out declaring he was the voice of the liberal mainstream….that ‘mainstream’ that was so mainstream it couldn’t get a majority, he’s now claiming that there is no mandate for a ‘Hard Brexit’…but of course there is…the vote was precisely about that…stopping immigration and wresting political control from Brussels. Osborne conjures up strawmen as he suggests Hard Brexit means cutting all ties and cooperation with the EU, or ‘Europe’ as he calls it….naturally that is complete alarmist nonsense…lies.  And oh yes…the results of many of Osborne’s own policies, such as the living wage and stamp duty changes?…pretty disastrous in the effects they have in business and the housing market and tax receipts.

Clegg told us that he couldn’t leave politics to the extremes, left or right.  He then told us that politics was broken and that what he saw drove him to become a radical who wanted wholesale change of the political system. Radical then but not ‘extreme’.

His replacement, Timothy Farron, is equally deluded as he claims Brexit was a ‘howl of anger‘ from the electorate about the state of the political system, the answer they sought being a LibDem government.  Really?  Four million UKIP voters, 11 million Tory voters and 9 million Labour.  What did the LibDems get?  Two million.  Clearly the voters have no idea what’s good for them.

Indeed LibDem Norman Lamb told us on the Today programme (08:34) that we have no idea what the voters wanted when they voted for Brexit, we know what staying in the EU meant [sweets and happy days all round] but the voters had no idea what leaving the EU meant, therefore May has no mandate to negotiate, therefore we need a second vote to clear this up…and if May’s deal is not accepted then no more votes, we stay in the EU….er wouldn’t the vote be about the content of the deal not the principle of Brexit, leaving the EU?  So another deal and another vote until we get one acceptable to the Leave camp.

Justin Webb didn’t challenge that claim that voting to leave was a vote for the unknown.  That’s nonsense, and a continued Remain narrative, that Leave voters are basically emotive, stupid anarchists [not just racist]…Leave voters knew precisely what they were voting for, less immigration, no political control by an unelected, arrogant elite in Brussels and the end to EU courts interfering in British sovereign law.  As for knowing what staying in the EU meant….Lamb thinks it is the land of milk and honey, the BBC refused to explore this important issue…because the real truth is that the EU is heading for ever closer integration, the only way it can survive, along with an EU army…and you only have to look at Deutsche Bank right now to understand the problems of the EU economy as it crashes and will possibly sink the Euro. Which may be no bad thing...The euro has destroyed the EU and led directly to Brexit

The BBC itself often pushes that same narrative from Lamb…that the vote was merely a vote against something rather than for something.  Which is tosh.  For less immigration, for an independent Britain, for control of our own laws and borders.

Now we have the pro-EU Sunday Times and Remainer and BBC plant [you have to think] Craig Oliver [in the pro-EU Sunday Mail] both churning out anti-Leave books.  Oliver was so upset at the result of the referendum he was sick…he thought holding the referendum was madness.  Can’t think what possessed Cameron to employ him.  Oliver claims May was an enemy agent for the Leave camp, good chance Oliver was an enemy agent for the BBC, gone from their employ but still onboard and reporting back from the heart of the Tory government…taking copious notes and then rapidly turning that into a reveal-all book.

Dominic Lawson in the Mail examines the latest Remain propaganda in a way that the BBC fails to do...No 10 spin doctor who scribbled notes for his memoirs in meetings and a cry of rage from Brexit losers.

Fraser Nelson in the Spectator also suggests there is mischief afoot….David Cameron can’t blame Theresa May for his awful “deal” with the EU

The BBC sees nothing underhand in these attacks on May and Boris and gives them full, uncritical credence.

The Sunday Times claims that May was soft on immigration controls and that her stance stopped Cameron from getting a better deal with the EU [in his utterly failed negotiations  that the BBC reported as a success]…however it admits that May wrote twice to Cameron in the period on question demanding tougher immigration controls….but you know what? Cameron didn’t feel he had her support for a tough line.  Poor lad.  Just who was it really that didn’t want tough immigration controls?  Cameron.

Oliver tells us that his book is a sincere, eyewitness account of what actually happened…however the crucial messages that he claims were sent by Boris that Oliver says indicated he actually wanted to vote to Remain are missing….

Sir Craig also claims Mr Johnson, now foreign secretary, was “genuinely in turmoil” about supporting the Leave campaign and had been “flip-flopping within a matter of hours” of declaring his intention.

Sir Craig writes that, the day before throwing his weight behind the Leave campaign, Mr Johnson sent a text to Mr Cameron warning him that he would be campaigning for Brexit.

However, he says Mr Johnson later sent a second message suggesting he could back Remain. [So where is it?]

“I ask DC what makes him so sure Boris is wobbling. He reads out some parts of the text including the phrase ‘depression is setting in’, followed by a clear sense that he’s reconsidering.

“Neither of us is left in any doubt,” he added.

 

Well I have a few doubts.  So Boris was down in the dumps….but where is the message that he was thinking of voting Remain?  ‘A clear sense that he’s reconsidering’ is just meaningless twaddle, pure invention, where’s the proof?

Still the BBC accept it as proof, so good enough eh?

But rest assured, the BBC is absolutely impartial and a vital balance in the nation’s political debates…so says James Harding, BBC Director of News…

A truly balanced view from the BBC: don’t blame us for Brexit

LOL.  Harding is either a fool or a fraud.  My take is that he is completely and wilfully dishonest.  Just read his piece and laugh aloud at the brazen lies and delusions that pour off the page.  The title is a good place to start.  But there’s more, lots more…

There have been two strands of criticism of our coverage. On the one hand, some Leavers have said the BBC reported impartially and accurately through the course of the campaign, but, since the vote of 23 June, we have returned to what they say are our true EU-luvvie colours and our reporting of the prospects for Brexit Britain has been gloomy or hysterical.

On the other, some Remainers have complained that we have been too impartial – that our unthinking insistence on balance meant we treated Remain and Leave arguments with equivalence, giving the same treatment to respected experts as to know-nothings and lightweights. Worse, the criticism has gone, we abandoned our duty to inform the public: the Leavers’ exaggerations, distortions and downright lies, they say, were given the same airtime as the Remainers’ evidence-based judgments. Impartial reporting, this argument goes, is contributing to the problem of post-truth politics.

Note how Harding words that as if the Remain camp’s claims about Leavers’ exaggerations, distortions and downright lies are true whilst Remain had ‘evidence base judgements’.  Well post-referendum the facts seem to indicate that the Remain camp’s ‘experts’ were vastly wrong…the ONS, the Treasury, the OECD and many other organisations now backtrack and tell us that all is calm, Brexit has not resulted in a meltdown…the main problem is the world economy and the EU’s economy not the UK’s.

He tells us that ‘In the months ahead, our job is to understand what Brexit actually means – without relish or alarm.’   Well not so far….the apocalyptic and alarmist tone that the BBC adopted pre-referendum has continued as it cherry-picks every negative story that it thinks it can connect to Brexit in some shape or form.

Laughably he says…‘Unsurprisingly, the BBC did not carry water for the government: our job is to challenge politicians, not to serve as a rebuttal unit or advocate the alternative argument.’

The BBC spent all its time rebutting the Leave camp’s claims but spent little effort in challenging the government’s…nor the fact that Cameron had hijacked the ‘Government’ for his campaign.

Harding even admits the BBC favoured the Remain camp…‘Inasmuch as the EU referendum was about the economy, it was about forecasts more than facts. It was not a contest of hard truths but an argument over whose predictions of the future you preferred. The BBC was abundantly clear that the overwhelming weight of expert economic opinion advised people to vote Remain.’

Trouble is those ‘experts’ were sp often in hock to the government…Carney and Lagarde owing their jobs to Osborne.  And as for the referendum being about the economy…no it was not.  The BBC decided it was going to concentrate on the economy as did the Remain camp…but the referendum was about immigration and sovereignty, political control.  The economy was a secondary issue.  The BBC pushed the Remain camp’s message.

Yes indeed…the BBC’s non-alarmist reporting…

EU referendum: Brexit ‘would spark year-long recession’ – Treasury

Harding goes on…

If you go back, you will see that the squeakier claims made by politicians were challenged again and again by our presenters and correspondents. Go back and look at Evan Davis take on Douglas Carswell over the claim that voting Leave would bring £350m a week back into UK coffers; watch David Dimbleby take on Michael Gove’s dismissal of the IFS; read what Reality Check said about George Osborne’s forecast that voting Leave would cost each home £4,300; watch Andrew Neil pick apart Nigel Farage’s numbers on immigration. Or Kamal Ahmed on the 6pm and 10pm bulletins saying: “The economic consensus is on one side of this debate.” I could go on and on.

 

So the examples he gives are nearly all ones where the BBC challenges the Leave camp…and the one he gives for the Remain camp?  Well we’ve looked at the BBC’s Reality Check and found it somewhat unchallenging when it comes to Remain claims.  Kamal Ahmed was decidedy pro-Remain and uncritical of their economic claims.

Funny old thing…it looks like the BBC’s Kamal Ahmed is a one man hit squad for the Remain camp out to neutralise any Leave campaign ‘good news’.

We’ve already noted his immediate rebuttal to Steve Hilton’s claim that all economic forecasts about Brexit are so much bunk and now as James Dyson tells us that it is ‘cobblers’ that the EU won’t trade with us Kamal again slips in a spoiler.  Just a week or so ago he was painting a gloomy picture of the economy on Brexit…

Have no fear though, the Remain camp didn’t suffer from BBC bias…

No one who watched the BBC during the campaign could have been left in any doubt that President Obama, the governor of the Bank of England, the IMF, OECD, IFS, CBI, prime minister, chancellor and, yes, both David Beckham and Jeremy Clarkson believed Britain should remain in the EU.

But did the BBC ever challenge any of their claims and their credibilty?  No.

Here’s the BBC ‘fact-checking’ claims about the NHS...Facts, Facts, And BBC Facts.

Is the BBC biased? also has doubts about the BBC’s Reality Check:

George Osborne’s bogus ‘families will be £4,300 poorer if we leave the EU’ claim a couple of days ago wasn’t debunked during the BBC One News at Six, despite being cited five times during the course of the bulletin. In fact, it wasn’t even questioned (not even by the BBC’s economics editor Kamal Ahmed).

As for Reality Check, the nearest we got to that was:

And the BBC’s Reality Check team has been going through the claims and today’s document in more detail on our Reality Check pages. That’s at bbc.co.uk/realitycheck.

 I have to say I that’s pretty inexcusable.

Harding finishes with this piece of self-delusion:

The BBC’s job is not to preside over the democratic process – it is to report, to host the argument and to interrogate the participants. We aim to inform our audiences, not seek the approval of politicians or pundits. That is what we sought to do in this difficult and contentious contests. And it is what we continue to do.

The BBC of course sees its job as precisely that, over-seeing the democratic process, guiding the voters to the ‘right’ conclusions…even if that means shutting out the ‘unacceptable voices’ from the debate, hiding the facts and promoting only the narrative, views and ideas that the BBC approves of.