1. Actually, @afneil with additional information it undermines the whole montage, but something has been nagging me about the episode with @JamesMcGrory on the @daily_politics
cc @lizrawlings
cc @lizrawlings
2. Remember the Owen Paterson clip? The one where he said “only a madman would actually leave the market”, and you said he meant “We would continue to have access”?
3. When you accused Open Britain of misrepresenting Owen, and when James McGrory replied he thought Owen was talking about membership, you said: He doesn’t mention the word ‘membership’ at all.
4. You then go on to say that you believe the whole segment would be damaging to Open Britain’s reputation, and that now your viewers had seen the “full quotes in context” they can make up their minds.
5. And that got me thinking, that can’t be the right interpretation, because Owen Paterson said we would not be like North Korea. In which case, it can’t be access, can it?
North Korea has access…or at least, you say so!
North Korea has access…or at least, you say so!
6. Then I realised there was something missing from your video. It wasn’t the same as Open Britain’s clip. There was a word missing from the beginning of the quote...
7. “Because” is a conjunction. We shouldn’t interpret the meaning from what he says later, we have to look at what the sentence was used in ‘conjunction’ with. #TheClueIsIntheName
8. When I found the question, Owen was being asked was about a ‘Trade Group’, leaving and re-joining ‘in some form’. The negative of this question would have resulted in defaulting to WTO rules, not stopping trade, which was your implication.
9. As for misrepresentation, textual analysis of a single sentence to determine someone’s meaning in this day and age is the methodology of cranks and conspiracy theorists. There is lots of other information covering Owen Paterson’s views. blogs.spectator.co.uk/2014/11/is-owe…
10. Owen Paterson launched “An optimistic vision of a post-EU United Kingdom” in November 2014 through his think tank UK2020. In it he asserts that there is “only realistic option, which is to stay within the EEA agreement.”
11. He spent months speaking in support of this vision, which involved remaining a member of the Single Market, both nationally and internationally. He also went on to promote it on both television and radio.
12. Owen even wrote an article in Conservative Home that leaving membership of the Single Market would put our economy at risk, and remaining in the EEA would give us “real power over our borders”
13. Owen Paterson also made joining the European Economic Area part of his re-election campaign in 2015. A position that he did not declare had changed throughout the rest of the year.
14. Owen’s support for membership of the Single Market was identified by Open Britain’s previous incarnation, Stronger In. As part of their referendum campaign, they documented and published his views in the document “What does Leave look like”.
15. Owen’s EU arguments are very repetitive and they barely change, and while monotonous to go through, this consistency allows us to cross reference his statements to find out what he means at any one time.
16. To many it may looks like his Owen Paterson’s arguments don’t change, however, an in depth study will show at least 2 distinct phases in Owen Paterson’s argument, and we can assume a third.
17. The first phase involves a 2015 election promise to invoke article 50 and negotiate a market deal around the Single market, before having a referendum on the deal. #FinalSay
18. And over a thousand businesses totally agreed with Owen on his approach which involves remaining a member of the Single Market.
19. Owen, however, is less keen on the idea of a referendum on the deal today. No longer believing the referendum he one referred to as "an informed choice" as being "the way to go"...
20. The post-election phase similarly involves a call to leave the political and judicial arrangements while remaining a member of the Single Market. A position, he claimed, was backed by a broad consensus of Small ‘c’ Conservatives.
21. After spending so long campaigning for this, however, Owen now believes we can’t leave the political judicial arrangements and we have to leave the Single Market which also doesn’t exist. The sound of a mad man wanting to leave the market.
22. In this post-election phase, Owen starts to talk about negotiating control of immigration back. Some days he is bullish, some days less so. Here is saying it is to be negotiated in a Newsnight interview at the end of October 2015.
23. Finally there is the Vote Leave phase which I’ve defined as December, the published date of Owen’s first speech to explicitly use the word “access”, and stretched back to the Newsnight interview. The question remains, however, where do these phases actually meet?
24. Another question is: What does Owen mean by “The Market”? He means the European Economic Area. We know this, because he said so, and there is also evidence of Owen using these terms interchangeably.
25. Now we have the full context, he is talking about membership here, because nobody has described a basic FTA with the EU as “joining it in some form”. The question is about leaving and re-joining a trade group with the Market being a trade bloc, and of course…
26. It is consistent with what he said in May. If any sane policy involves membership of the market, by implication any policy not involving membership of the market is insane. Ergo, only a mad man would leave membership of the market.
27. He states the EU is a political organisation to distinguish it from ‘the Market’ and highlight we can leave one and stay in the other. (Owen tried to adapt this in early Vote Leave speeches but eventually dropped it.)
28. The ‘political’ organisation argument is actually the first point in the Single Market section of Owen’s vision, and here he is making it in his May 23, 2015 Radio 4 interview. Note, he also suggests we can get back to the “arrangement” we voted to join.
29. He then proceeds with a very traditional Owen Paterson argument of naming benefits of Single Market membership, and how they will carry on. In this case the prosperity and buying our goods, in May it was the prosperity and the jobs.
30. Here he is another example of a Sky interview from just days before that radio 4 interview: It’s not the EU, it’s ‘The market’ that delivers the 3 million jobs, and it’s the trade we want. This time in reference to the renegotiation.
31. He doesn’t mention ‘membership’ in the Sky interview either, but we know he is talking about membership of the Single Market, because ‘the market’ is the EEA and it guarantees membership.
32. And those 3 million jobs will not be lost because we will continue to export to the Single Market. Continuing to trade was always a part of Owen Paterson’s Single Market membership argument.
33. He then explicitly states that they will come to an arrangement, so again, this isn’t about just access but a trade agreement of some type. We have heard that expression used before in relation to the market we voted to join.
34. He then goes on to argue we won’t jump off, the first instance I can find of this argument was post-election. Here he is in May 2015 arguing we won’t jump off because we can get back to the trade arrangement we joined by being a member of the EEA.
35. While he said it in October after saying “Only a madman would leave the market”, he also says it in May directly before saying any sane policy involves membership of the market.
36. And on the Today show in May, Owen used the same phrase to argue the Bank of England should look at the EEA option, because it isn’t a choice between the EU and jumping into the dark.
37. Back to the October interview and Owen qualifies his argument that we will continue trading with the fact we have a massive deficit with them, a classic Owen Paterson argument for Single Market membership.
38. He further qualifies it with the fact there is a ‘huge’ interest across the EU to continue trading. Another argument used by Owen in his European vision.
39. Before talking about the 5 million jobs, a consistent element of his Single Market membership speeches, and concluding we will come to a trade agreement. In fact there is nothing in this interview which is inconsistent with his Single Market vision.
40. Finally, a big clue can be found in what Owen says about the renegotiation. It is a “Golden opportunity” to “go back to what we were told we joined”. Owen has not changed his position on the “market relationship” he wanted in 2014.
41. So, on this basis, let’s look at what we have. Firstly you referred to the BBC clip as “The clip you used on Owen Paterson”. It was neither their clip, nor did it fully represent the clip they presented. Your statement was not true.
42. What is true is that if someone tracked down the original footage, they must have reviewed the full conversation in context, including the question Owen was answering and how it affected the interpretation of his response.
43. It is also true that there is nearly a 2 second margin of error to accurately recreate the Open Britain clip, and therefore we can assume it was not an accident that the conjunction was removed and the sentence was presented incomplete.
44. And it is also true that if the clip you showed had been the Open Britain clip, instead of the clip you falsely claimed was theirs, then presenting it in the way the BBC did, would have been impossible, because it was subtitled.
45. Furthermore, you argued that Owen just meant we would continue to trade and we would have access, but Owen’s comparison to North Korea meant this interpretation was inconsistent with other statements you had made.
46. The “carry to trading” argument you offered also ignores the fact the negation of the question asked amounted to being on WTO rules. A question the programme decided not to show the viewer and a question they concealed by presenting the quote as a standalone sentence.
47. You also argued that ‘membership’ isn’t mentioned, but in a response to a question about leaving and joining a group, ‘membership’ is implied in the language. The language in the sentence in which your programme removed all evidence of.
48. You further alleged that Open Britain cut the clip to hide Owen’s following statements, but if, as you stated, they drew from sources going back to 2009, there was no motive to use this clip over any of the other examples of Owen arguing for membership. #MissingAnMInTheMMO
49. Finally you said that these were the “full quotes in context”, a statement which is entirely false. You didn’t even present the full quote presented by Open Britain, let alone the necessary vital context needed for the correct interpretation of the quote.
50. It appears you made several false statement, a dubious allegation, and arguments which showed no regard for the full context of the quote (which was not presented to the viewers), in a segment in which you readily admitted that you believed would be damaging.
51. Now I’m not here to point the finger of intent. Despite some very interesting decisions around presentation, proving intent on facts alone is very hard. Claims of “You stopped the video there because” are best avoided…
52. And if you, @lizrawlings @edwardchivers and whoever else gets together to arrange a formal apology and retraction, one which is given the same permanence on the BBC site as the original interview, then we can all put this down to a genuine mistake.
53. However, if that isn’t forthcoming, then that could be seen as evidence of intent. Or, that the BBC has no journalistic integrity and is happy to make damaging allegations using specially cut clips while demonstrating an utter contempt for the truth.
54. And the worst part of this, is even if Open Britain had been wrong, this still looks very bad for the BBC. You have a politician who said that leaving membership of the Single Market would put our economy at risk.
55. He said the only realistic option, the only sane option, was to stay within the EEA agreement. He claimed that many more than 3 million jobs were dependent on our membership of the Single Market, and he had the support of small ‘c’ conservatives, and 1000+ businesses.
56. After making it part of his personal campaign to get re-elected, and in the Daily Politics scenario, 5 months later he has sold out his beliefs, and is pursuing a policy that he said was unrealistic, insane, and would put the economy and millions of jobs at risk.
57. He then stabbed the small ‘c’ Conservatives who voted for him in the back, sold over 1000s Eurosceptic businesses down the river, and reneged on the statements he made to get elected all seemingly for an ideological position.
58. And despite being elected into a parliament where the then Prime Minster, and the then Chancellor, categorically said that staying in the Single Market ‘in some form’ was a decision for the future government *AND* Parliament, Owen actively argued to leave it.
59. That’s the guy you’re supposed to be holding to account! In a democracy, the MP who got voted in saying one thing and then quietly sold everyone out who supported that position is absolutely the person who should definitely be held to account!
60. Instead you decide to pick on a clip in a video highlighting what people used to say which portrays an MP in a way that is entirely consistent with things he had said, and the platform he was elected on. Views he even expressed on the @daily_politics
61. A position which we definitely know the campaign knew he held, and therefore, your argument must be that despite Owen never declaring he had changed his position in 2015, Open Britain somehow knew the time he secretly changed it and were deliberately misrepresenting him.
63. And I do recommend the BBC get an independent to look at that montage, because whoever put it together is clearly not very thorough, and the way it has been presented has major flaws which will eventually leave serious questions over the integrity of those involved. /End
