Them and us

Gabriel Gatehouse and a Dutch activist on 'Newsnight'

If you missed this - Gabriel Gatehouse on yesterday's From Our Home Correspondent - here's a transcript:

Being a foreign correspondent is easy glory. Trips to the frontline with friendly rebels. The crack of bullets behind walls for cover. "Come, come, this way is safe!" Scary? Absolutely. Dangerous? Sometimes. But there's camaraderie too, and hospitality. "Stay for lunch. Thank you BBC. Thank you for telling our story to the world."

Those three magic letters - BBC - they act as a badge of integrity. They open doors. Often the people we report on see our presence as part of their struggle against the Establishment. 

Reporting from home is different. At home we're often seen as the Establishment, and those same three letters can carry with them a lot of baggage. 

I learned this while reporting on a story about Tommy Robinson. 

He campaigns against what he calls "Muslim grooming gangs" - cases like those in Rotherham, where groups of men, many with Pakistani heritage, systematically sexually abused young girls and women, many white and from working class backgrounds. 

This is an explosive issue, Robinson and his followers believe there's an Establishment conspiracy to cover-up such cases. Many did go unreported for a long time. Many of the convicted perpetrators have indeed been of Pakistani origin. 

But Tommy Robinson founded the English Defence League. Even though he has since left the group, saying it had been taken over by racists, some accuse him of using cases like Rotherham for political gain, to label an entire community as child abusers. 

Tommy Robinson was recently jailed for contempt of court. He'd broken the law by communicating details of an ongoing trial, potentially threatening the collapse of the case, but his followers saw yet another Establishment cover-up. 

Over half a million people signed a petition calling for his release. That's more than a fringe movement. 

I wanted to talk to these people - the concerned citizens, not the far-right activists - and find out what was motivating them. The problem was none of them want to talk to me. 

Ahead of a rally in his support I contacted half a dozen people. Some at first agreed to meet, only to cancel at the last minute. Others told me to eff off straightaway. 

"The biased BBC? You must be joking!", one woman yelled at me down the phone. "You just want to stick me on TV and call me a racist". 

Even though that was precisely the opposite of what I was trying to do, I could see her point. To talk to a journalist is to cede control over what you say to those who will edit your words into a report. The polarised politics of recent years has been the enemy of nuance. 

I made my way to the rally. "The BBC are here," one speaker announced from the stage. The crowd booed and hissed. "When are you going to report the news?", one man shouted at me. "They are covering up the facts", another said. "The paedophile problem goes right to the top of our Establishment", said yet another, adding "and it started with Jimmy Savile". 

Their beliefs and their anger seemed genuine. These were people who don't see the stories they're concerned about on the TV news bulletins - the stories they do read about on social media. 

Sometimes those stories are false or only half-true but, in the age of Facebook, organisations like the BBC no longer control the national conversation in the way we once did. 

Also at the rally were people whose anger seemed less raw, more politically calculated. UKIP's leader was there. So were representatives from nationalist movements in Europe and the United States. I told a group of Dutch activists I was from the BBC and they said they'd be happy to be interviewed, but when we switch the camera on one suddenly asked, "What channel are you from?". I was taken aback. We'd just been through this. "The BBC?, he said in that flawless way most Dutch people have with the English language. "No way!" he told me, and shoved the camera away. It was pure performance. 

Like the friendly rebels in the foreign war zone the new populist nationalists understand the power of the camera but with social media they don't need the BBC. They have their own channels. And in their struggle they see us as the enemy.

"Within minutes ministerial advisers were spinning that the result was better than expected"

Here's a transcription of Dominic Casciani's allegedly headache-relieving From Our Home Correspondent talk today. 

Before you read it though, please peruse this (accurate) comment about it from an earlier thread:

And now, here's Dom:

Transcript, From Our Home Correspondent, 23/1/2017

There were so many bundles of papers submitted to the Supreme Court in the Brexit appeal that if each sheet had been placed end to end they would have stood four and a half miles high. 

The hearings and judgment in this remarkable case have felt to me like an abridged version of what happened to our country since the vote said 'Nein danke, non merci, we're off!'. 

Back in December, as we gathered for the first day, the court was surrounded by protesters.

One chap had a sign declaring his local council has stolen his taxi licence. (Adopting a mock-Cockney accent) "Britain out! Britain out!", he chanted, virtually non-stop all day.

An Irish dancer - and I use that description with some hesitation - pranced around, wearing a Star of David.

And then there was the menace towards Gina Miller - the investment fund manager and philanthropist who'd partly bankrolled the challenge. She'd endured months of death threats online, By the time this week's judgment was delivered she needed a security escort to and from the building. 

In court the scene couldn't have been more different. The Supreme Court is furnished with a remarkable carpet designed by the pop artist Sir Peter Blake. It depicts flowers from the UK's four nations. It symbolises the people coming together under one rule of law.

Outside the only way you could sometimes be heard was to shout the loudest, but inside - before eleven justices - everybody would have their turn. 

First up had been Jeremy Wright QC, the Attorney General - the government's most senior law officer, "The King is the delegate of the people", he declared. That soundbite meant ministers could use the Royal prerogative - executive powers - to end EU membership on our behalf. And without a great deal of further explanation he substituted himself in favour of James Eadie QC, first Treasury counsel - the government's go-to man when in a tight spot. Now his case appeared elegantly simple: If Parliament hasn't tied the hands of ministers then ministers have the power to trigger Article 50. 

But Mr Eadie's route to finding where they tucked away that power was torturous to us mere mortals and then, during Day Two, Lord David Pannick QC, arguably the greatest showman among today's advocates, bound to his feet for Gina Miller. He advanced. He engaged. With one flash of his legal rapier the government's gizzard was on its point. Or at least that's what he wanted you to think.

The wily old judges, combined age of 753, know him too well. Lord Sumption - he of the wild, ageing rock star hair - interrupted him after less than two minutes. Lady Hale and Lords Kerr and Mance pounced next. If they hadn't got a word in then they never would. But Lord Pannick - that's spelt with a 'k' by the way, rather than a 'c' - wasn't panicking. He took us on a tour of how constitutional authority had passed from the Crown and ministers to Parliament, And along the way we stopped at a Newfoundland lobster factory and the unpronounceable to De Keyser Royal Hotel - two cases more than a century old. 

Those and many other proved one thing: Leaving the EU isn't as easy as, well, to quote an infamous headline from the Sun, "Up yours, Delors!". 

Can we untangle the continental genes that have spliced into our nation's DNA? 

What, for example, was to court to make of devolution. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have a role in administering EU rules. Did this give their devolved bodies the veto, or at the very least a say? 

In the end what mattered was a simple constitutional point. And on Tuesday it took Lord Neuberger, the president of the court, a few clear sentences to spell out that only Parliament could make and break the law that governs our membership of the EU.

Within minutes ministerial advisers were spinning that the result was better than expected. 

Will this case still matter once Brexit has happened? In the 17th Century Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke put King James I and VI firmly in his place. "The law of the realm cannot be changed but by Parliament", he declared. There was sound and fury from the King but Coke said the rules were the rules. 

The Supreme Court's judgment means that Coke's words are still the British way of doing things.

This BBC Brexit storm

That feeling of drowning in a tsunami of BBC anti-Brexit bias swept over me again as I was listening to this month's From Our Home Correspondent on Radio 4. The programme's website pre-announced one of the features like this:

Torcuil Crichton looks at the issues raised by Brexit from the perspective of those living and working in his native Western Isles.

Would it be positive? Would it be negative? Would it be neutral?  

It was a foregone conclusion really. Of course it was negative. This is BBC Radio 4. Nothing else should ever have been expected.

Torcuil Crichton of the Daily Record, one of the programme's guest correspondents, talked of "Brexit storms", "this Brexit storm" and our "Brexit quandary". (At least he didn't call it what he's called it on Twitter, a "nightmare"). 

He also talked of all the good things the EU had done for the Western Isles and explained how the EU wasn't to blame for any of the bad things that have happened there: 

Over 40 years the Hebrides have been transformed by large tranches of European funding for everything from crofting to causeways to community businesses. In this part of Brexit Britain they will genuinely mourn the loss.  

Islanders don't blame the Spaniards or the EU for decimate fish stocks. We know it was east coast trawlers who scooped out the herring and everything else years before a common fisheries policy was even thought of.

His lament ended on this glum note:

Although the water was so still that we were able to see the ocean floor we found on our little boat that we could not plumb the depths of Scotland's or Britain's Brexit quandary. And who can?

Still, at least it wasn't just Brexiteers who might have found this biased. The cybernats might well have raised a grim eyebrow too at this emphatically unionist-sounding take on matters:

Some (Scottish fisherman) would prefer fishing to the a UK-wide policy, as if they don't trust it in the hands of their own parliament. Scotland, you see, is not one uniform national identity but many cultures. These differences, these divisions, will surface again if - as she threatens to - First Minister Nicola Sturgeon presses for a second independence referendum during this Brexit storm.

Why is it no surprise that this feature came from an anti-Brexit, anti-Scottish independence reporter? Will the bias ever go the other way on From Our Home Correspondent? (I very much doubt it).

From Our Biased Correspondent

Also while catching up with comments here at ITBB, Mishal Husain's new BBC Radio series From Our Home Correspondent contained a remarkable report from the Corbynistas' bête noire Laura Kuenssberg on the EU referendum debate.

Given that Laura is the BBC's Political Editor, I'd have hoped for her to be scrupulously neutral here. 'Scrupulously neutral' she most certainly wasn't though.

Why was it biased? Well, try this:

When the Chancellor marched onto the gleaming floor of a high-tech factory to deliver the economic Exocet at his rivals who want to leave the EU...

Was it really an "economic Exocet" (as pro-Remain types might say) or merely a rain-soaked sparkler (as pro-Brexit types might say)?

A clip of George Osborne sternly making the economic case against Brexit was then played. 

Laura then gently mocked some of the more apocalyptic claims of the Remain side while continually stressing the seriousness of the issue:

Of course, it is the case that our decision on staying in or leaving the European Union is a significant decision, probably the biggest choice we've taken as a country for decades. The consequences of leaving might be economically disastrous. It is certainly a risk.

As for the Leave side? Punters wanting to hear Boris. "Gags" flowing from Boris. Selfies...

Knickers, and the fictional excesses of the EU.

"Fictional excesses of the EU"? Impartial BBC commentary??

An example of lefty Laura-bashing

And Laura continued, sarcastically:

So what of those pesky hard questions from journalists? 'Dear Public, ignore those hacks who want us to explain how life outside would work'.

She then used two adjectives to characterise both campaigns. For the 'In' campaign she chose "sober". For the 'Out' campaign she choice 'garrulous'. The former is a more positive term than the latter.

She then chose two more phrases. For the 'In' campaign "authority". For the 'Out' campaign "striking political exuberance". 

She then chose some more phrases to characterise the experts backing each campaign. For the 'In' campaign, she called their experts "an alphabet soup of economic heavyweight organisations". For the 'Out' campaign, she called their experts "less conventional backers".

The whole thing she then characterised as "the classic head versus heart" - as if reason was on the 'In' side. "Safety" versus "daring-do", she continued. 

The 'Out' side, Laura said in conclusion, are "having more fun" though.

I don't think you need a degree in English to comprehend where the bias of that piece of BBC reporting lies.