Thread by @EmporersNewC

Britain is in trouble if it continues to go through with Brexit as it is doing currently. Our institutions are not working as they should and to prove it we only need to look at the government policy of leaving the Single Market.

#MontageGate (Part 1)

Here is David Davis explaining part of the rationale of leaving the Single Market. It’s because “It was plain”, and “that means that”.

(In Part 1 we’re going to take that on face value)

George Osborne doesn’t say we’ll leave the Single Market in his Marr interview, so we can assume that David Davis was referring to this montage that @BBCPolitics “put together”.

There are more than a few problems with it.

The first problem is that “almost certainly” isn’t “should” or “would”. What Andrea Leadsom says is not consistent with what other people on Leave said in those clips, but what she says later in the interview is consistent with what Michael Gove had previously said.

Not just Michael Gove but Boris Johnson, Andrea Leadsom, George Osborne and the Prime Minister all said the decision on our future trade relationship would be made after the vote. With George Osborne making it clear it wasn’t a unilateral decision. #WeWereWarned

The paper David Cameron refers to not only documents the models the UK will consider but states that the government will do everything it could do secure a positive outcome and seek the best possible access to the Single Market.

And it was in that context the Prime Minister was asked how he would interpret the result after the vote and he did say a Canadian deal. This, however, was not inconsistent with a future government interpreting it differently, as the Prime Minister declared after the result.

Neither was it inconsistent with a Prime Minister who reserved the right to change his mind before the referendum began. With it not being a unilateral decision, he could have asked for a Canadian deal and ended up with a Customs Union. #WeWereWarned

The montage clip has been cut to look like David contradicted everything he and the government said before, during, and after the referendum, but the editor has omitted the next sentence. “We then…” The Prime Minister was talking sequentially. This is process, not outcome.

Anyone who has studied David Cameron’s campaign in detail not only knows this process, but they also know that Britain deciding to leave the European Union and the Single Market does not preclude the Norwegian option, it precedes it.

Here is David Cameron saying Britain could choose to leave the European Union and the Single Market and have a status like Norway that has ‘access’ to the Single Market.

Once we know that the expression that David Cameron used is not inconsistent with the Norwegian option, then everything he said before, during, and after the campaign is consistent.

The Cameron clip, like the Leadsom clip, is out of context.

It is actually a good job he didn’t rule the EEA out. Referendums are on specific outcomes and that statement was made after the vote had begun. It would have amounted to 2 referendums with 1 vote. The result would be unsafe and in those circumstances it should be declared void.

Talking about ruling things out, Michael Gove ruled out staying out of the Single Market at his major speech. Or at least, that is what Laura Kuenssberg concluded after she specifically asked him.

https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/722382800373080064

Now it is true he did say it to Marr, but in the context of the wider campaign, the Prime Minister responded the next day by underlining the fact that Vote Leave’s position didn’t amount to a consensus and was therefore not definitive.

This was almost certainly cynical, but it wasn’t not true. The Vote Leave application for designation acknowledges there are different opinions and that they must be represented if there was going to be a leave outcome.

There wasn’t even a definitive position in Vote Leave. It’s difficult to argue people thought Michael’s views were authoritative when people in Vote Leave didn’t even agree and articulated those views publicly.

https://twitter.com/iankatz1000/status/730162687959781377

But mainly Vote Leave weren’t a government and it weren’t presenting a prospectus. Here in this official campaign broadcast, just 11 days after the Gove interview, Lord Owen explains “We don’t know what is going to be the response of the European Single Market, the EEA…”

The Remain Campaign, the Leave campaign, the BBC, and the government all said that the leave campaign didn’t have authority, and that is the correct context to put the Boris Johnson clip. It was conjecture because it could only be conjecture.

Although, after Boris was disparaging about the Single Market, but struggled to actually say we’d be out of it in his previous Andrew Marr appearance, it was at least good to finally get some clarity on what Boris Johnson thought.

Clarity that evidently didn’t last the week. It turns out Boris Johnson is not the epitome of honesty, clarity, and sincerity that the BBC believe he is. The montage not only disregards the context of Vote Leave’s remit but also disregards the context that it is Boris Johnson.

But Boris also said we could strike a great free trade agreement like Wolfgang Schäuble had just said, and the only agreement Wolfgang had just spoken about the UK striking was one that gave it: Membership of the Single Market.

That's cool, because so did George Osborne.

..George’s argument was (for almost the entire campaign) that Wolfgang Schäuble had said we would have to sign up to Freedom of Movement to get the access our businesses need.

It’s not hard to pick it out...

George is so consistent that when he co-writes a letter to the Telegraph with David Cameron you can practically pick out David’s argument that Vote Leave want to leave the Single Market, and George’s argument that we could negotiate our way back into it.

Even the hatchet piece from the Daily Mail manages to pick the quote from the Andrew Neil interview that most accurately represents how George was campaigning.

Having said that, George isn’t 100% on this. He is inconsistent.

Having looked at his whole campaign the “Reality” might actually come from a belief that Vote Leave will get their way. He does say as much to Ulster radio days before the interview, but that doesn’t mean membership of the Single Market is off the table.

After the interview shown in the montage clip we find George distributing an official campaign document specifying the EEA as a possible outcome of a vote to leave and using the term “mid-range” which is only the mid-range if Single Market membership is on the table.

And instead of mentioning that David has decided on a Canadian deal, George declines to mention it in his Sun and Today interviews, and instead we find him talking to Peston on Sunday about the ‘Central figure’. A figure which, again, is dependent on Single Market membership.

In the last week of the campaign we find George making a distinction between leaving the EU and leaving the Single Market before doing an interview where he again suggests the UK will sign up to Freedom of Movement and do that Swiss or Norwegian deal.

A few days later the "great big question" in British Politics is what is happening with the Single Market. Here we also learn that when George talked about signing up to Freedom of movement to protect our businesses, he meant membership of the Single Market....

Some days George said we’d be out of the Single Market, more often than not he implied we’d be in, but there is nothing he says or does in the campaign to suggest that any option is off the table.

Every clip gives a false impression. It is nothing more than propaganda, and Part 2 will address the arguments: “People would have assumed” and examine how our politicians, and our national broadcaster, responded to what is clearly fake news.

/End

#MontageGate