Aug 24 2007
The BBC shows its federalist sense of “balance”
This morning the Today programme gave a short and unpleasant interview to Ian Davidson MP, a Labour MP with the courage to demand a referendum on the draft EU Constitutional Treaty.
The BBC do not invite me on to put the case for a referendum. Maybe because I have given a seminar series in Oxford University on the Constitution, and have written three books provding a British critique of political integration, I know too much for them to allow me on. If they did, they would doubtless introduce me as a "right winger", whose right wing view was proven by my Euroscepticism. They would then probably spend most of the interview discussing whether this showed the Conservatives had lurched to the right.
They did not attempt to claim that Ian Davidson (backed by up to 40 other Labour MPs) was lurching to the right because he shares our view that we need a referendum. Instead they dismissed his position as a "challenge to the authority of the Prime Minister"! All Mr Davidson was doing was speaking up for the 80% of the British public, including many Labour voters, who want the PM to honour his pledge to give us a referendum on this most important of matters. Mr Davidson very honourably reminded us all that all Labour MPs were elected on the pormise of such a referendum.
The BBC also slapped down Mr Davidson’s equally sensible suggestion that a "new" government led by a new PM should renegotiate the "settlement" from Blair’s last EU Council. The BBC seemed ignorant of the fact that only a properly constituted IGC can propose Treaty change, and we have not yet had an IGC on this latest abomination. Of course any government can decide to treat the IGC seriously and demand a renegotiation of the hasty compromise agreed foolishly at the last Council.
The BBC should instead have asked Mr Davidson what changes he wanted to see in such a renegotiation, and asked him more about what leverage the UK could bring to bear.
Personally I think it is easy. The "new" government should say it is not bound by Blair’s deal. It should announce quite clearly that it will veto anything which takes power away from the UK, but would allow the others to move ahead in a federalist direction if we are given watertight opt outs from the federalist agenda.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Does anybody expect objectivity from the state-sponsored BBC anymore? The BBC has an agenda which it pursues with vigor. The reason why Mr Redwood is often so vilified by the BBC is because he isn’t a ’safe’ interview. Opinion is not wanted by the BBC.
Gordon Brown must give our people a say on the EU constitutional treaty. Labour indeed promised it in their manifesto. Now they are reneging on a promise made to our people at election time. Just as they did over taxation, tuition fees and countless other matters.
John Redwood: The BBC do not invite me on to put the case for a referendum. Maybe because I have given a seminar series in Oxford University on the Constitution, and have written three books providing a British critique of political integration, I know too much for them to allow me on.