Nigel Farage

The British Immigration Debate: From The Inside Looking Out

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

SPS UK Immigration Life In The UK Test 4

 

Most British people will go through life not knowing what it takes for a foreigner to become a citizen of the UK. Why would we? By accident of birth most of us had the immense good fortune to grow up in one of the greatest, most wealthy, powerful and free countries on Earth, never giving our 0.89% against-the-odds luck a second thought. We have no experience of uprooting our lives and moving to these isles from somewhere else, or of the financial and bureaucratic hurdles that must be overcome in order to settle here and acquire a British passport.

Our lack of empathy – together with widespread ignorance of the various types of immigration and the differing rules and laws governing them – makes it very hard to have a rigorous, fact-based discussion of past and present British immigration policy. Throw in the careerist short-term focus of our politicians and a sane debate becomes next to impossible, as we have seen over and over again, most recently in the 2014 European elections.

Witnessing the British immigration system close-up when you are already a UK citizen, safe and secure in your legal status, offers a dispassionate but revealing glimpse of what it is actually like to go through the arduous and often stressful process of settling permanently in Britain. If only our political leaders and opinion-setters in the media would disengage from the battle of the 24 hour news cycle for one day and take the time to see for themselves, they might have a small epiphany and (for those with genuinely open minds) become willing to think and talk about immigration in a different way, giving us the debate we need rather than the one we have.

You don’t have to travel far for this reality check because the heart of Britain’s current immigration problem is best expressed not at passport control at Heathrow airport, the migrant camps in Calais  or the Polish grocery store on the high street, but in the accredited test centres up and down the country that administer the “Life In The UK” test to people seeking permanent residency or citizenship of the UK.

To be clear, the problem is not the “Life In The UK” test itself – though one could certainly quibble with the curious selection of factoids and trivialities that the Home Office proclaims to represent a sound working knowledge of modern Britain, or speculate endlessly about the percentage of immigrants who exercise their right to take the test in Welsh or Scottish Gaelic (at unknown cost to the taxpayer).

The problem is that the “Life In The UK” test takers are in the midst of a long, demanding and expensive process to settle permanently in Britain, one which an equal number of immigrants – by virtue of being EU citizens – are free to bypass altogether. This disparity of treatment, a function of Britain’s membership of the European Union, inadvertently reveals almost everything that is wrong with the current British immigration debate.

Observing the waiting room in of one of these anonymous-looking test centres as an existing, documented British citizen is a revelatory and slightly humbling experience, because here you are surrounded by people who fiercely covet something that you already have. As you enter, you are quite likely to pass by people leaving in tears because they have failed the test and have to take it (and pay the fee) again.

The prevailing mood is one of fear – the candidates sit in tense silence, often with heads bowed over test prep books, going over a few final practice questions before showtime. Did the Roman occupation of Britain last for 150 years or 400 years? Who fought in two wars against Napoleon – Horatio Nelson or Winston Churchill? And is driving your car as much as possible one of the two things you can do to look after the environment?

Softball questions aside, the bar to settle here when you come from outside the EU is set very high. To seek permanent residency or citizenship is to make a significant investment of time, energy and money towards an application which may not even be successful (and for which there is no refund in the event of rejection).

It involves divulging every conceivable detail about your life and proving to immigration officials beyond reasonable doubt that you are capable of sustaining yourself economically without becoming a burden on the state. And to top it off, your biometric information is taken and added to a database for identity verification whenever you enter or leave the country, and for any other purpose that the government may concoct in future.

SPS UK Immigration Life In The UK Test 2
A and B might be more fun.

 

The process by which someone from the European Union settles in the United Kingdom is rather simpler. The single market ensures that citizens of any EU member state  can move to the UK to work and live indefinitely as they please, bypassing all of the steps and hurdles facing a Sri Lankan, American, Turkish or Chinese immigrant. The minimum logistical requirements consist of packing a bag and turning up.

This is great for those of us who want (and are able) to live an itinerant life or pursue a multinational European career – the benefits of the single market cannot then be overstated. But for every British person who sees only opportunity in the EU’s free movement of people, there is another working for the minimum wage who will never be offered a secondment to the Brussels office by their company, and who must console themselves with the second-order benefits of free movement – such as “delighting in the capital’s kaleidoscopic culture” or being served their “early morning coffee” by someone from Spain.

The single market in its current and unamended form may yet be in Britain’s best interest, and the free movement of people may be a net positive thing – but the British people have not had a say in the matter since the 1975 European Community referendum, and it’s quite clear that they want to have a debate about it now.

Sometimes that desire is expressed forcefully and unpleasantly – any talk from politicians and their supporters about “hordes of Romanians” or slurs about eastern European workers is rude, disrespectful and unbecoming – but it is categorically not racist. Those who disagree need to check their dictionary and contemporary history books to reacquaint themselves with the true meaning of the word.

(It should – but does not – go without saying that just because the immigration sceptics have their fair share of racists within the ranks, this does not imply or prove that all anti-immigrant positions are necessarily racist. All racists are against immigration by definition, but not all people – or even most people – with concerns about immigration are racist).

Our British democracy is neither perfect or universal. That’s how it comes to pass that people have voted in every general and European election since the 1975 referendum but still ended up in 2014 with an immigration policy widely considered unsatisfactory. We have been guided to this bad place by generations of politicians who were too cowardly to start a difficult conversation on the subject during their own tenures, happy to leave the issue on the back-burner until it is now finally starting to boil over in the age of Cameron, Clegg, Miliband and Farage.

A real leader would seize the opportunity to give the British people the debate that they want, and which has been wrongly suppressed for too long by a political consensus that cried “racism!” at the first mention of immigration. A real leader would step up and proclaim the many benefits that immigration confers on Britain, while acknowledging its wildly varying impact on different sections of society, and discussing ways to mitigate the negative aspects. A real leader – and for all he has done to start the debate, Nigel Farage has failed here – would do all of this without resorting to scapegoating or undue exploitation of people’s fears.

In short, none of Britain’s party chiefs can at present be described as a responsible leader on one of the most important political issues of the day for many people. As it stands, our country loses no matter who wins in 2015.

If Labour (who have been almost entirely captured by their metropolitan professional class at the expense of their former party base) win the general election, nothing will change and the increasingly poisonous status quo will continue. A majority within this rootless Labour Party still see any questioning of immigration as morally equivalent to owning a signed first edition of Mein Kampf, and Ed Miliband has apparently decided that refusing to acknowledge UKIP’s victories and the public sentiment behind them will somehow be interpreted as a sign of his strength and resoluteness.

If the Conservatives win, they will likely fail in their attempts to extract meaningful concessions for Britain on inter-union movement of people from the EU or changing the eligibility for immigrant access to public services and the welfare state (getting unanimous support from the other 27 member states being a dim prospect). The only way the Tories will then be able to save face is to increase the already onerous barriers and impediments to those seeking to come to the UK from outside the European Union, many of whose talents and skills we urgently need – and the last thing we should be doing is further discouraging them from coming here.

If the Liberal Democrats avoid complete electoral annihilation in 2015, their best hope is to join another coalition government, in which case their natural instincts could only lead them to solidify Ed Miliband’s “full steam ahead” policy on Europe in the event of a Labour-led government or act as a minor brake on any destructive moves to crack down further on non-EU immigration in the event of another Conservative-led coalition.

And if UKIP were to perform well and capture a significant number of seats at Westminster without toning down their overly strident rhetoric or adding any kind of nuance or acknowledgement of geopolitical reality to their own policies, the other parties would likely be so unwilling to deal with them that their MPs would simply be frozen out of the process altogether.

SPS UK Immigration Visas

For all this ambivalence, Britain is a diverse and mostly tolerant land, and immigrants have played a huge part in our history and heritage. In today’s modern economy we need to be able to compete for the brightest and best of all the world’s talent, making it attractive for people to study at British universities, work for British firms and settle here with their families.

Somewhere between the onerous and expensive application process for non-EU immigrants combined with quotas and limited access to public services on one hand, and the EU single market’s wide open borders on the other, lies the best answer to Britain’s immigration conundrum. Unfortunately, Britain is not able to choose the perfect point along this spectrum because  the EU mandates an all-or-nothing approach. You are either part of the European Union and a full member of the single market, or you are on the outside.

The free-movement aspect of the single market makes perfect sense in the context of the ‘ever-closer union’ that the EU’s founders envisaged would one day become a single political European superstate – indeed, such a goal cannot be realised without total, unimpeded free movement of people. But if the goal is anything less than total political union (and a vanishingly small proportion of Brits  or other Europeans want to be subsumed into such an entity) then there is no real reason for the absolutist status quo, in which any controls on people coming from the EU to live and work in Britain are prohibited.

Unlike the United States of America – a real political, cultural and economic union – in Europe there are naturally occurring impediments to the free movement of people anyway, due to differences in language, culture, currency (not all of the EU is within the Eurozone) and other factors. Imposing modest, light-touch limitations in response to the wishes of the people need not bring the European Union crashing down or mean the imposition of ‘fortress Britain’.

The free movement of people within the EU may or may not remain the correct policy for Britain once all is said and done. But those who trumpet only the benefits and view any discussion of the cost as tantamount to xenophobia are guilty of shutting down an important debate whose time has come.

In this age of austerity, the main political fault line is over how much the rich should contribute versus the poor at a time of cuts to government services. Some of those who speak out most eloquently and forcefully on behalf of the poor are the same relatively wealthy middle class people who also unquestioningly support unlimited immigration.

These left-wing champions of the downtrodden would be aghast at the suggestion that their noble and high-minded political beliefs are in any way hurting the working classes for whom they presume to speak, but in supporting unlimited EU immigration and seeking to shut down any debate on the matter with accusations of racism and ignorance, they are doing just that – preserving benefits for themselves at the expense of the less privileged.

And if you personally benefit from immigration because it keeps your gentrified city neighbourhood more interesting and makes it affordable to get your house cleaned twice a week, but you don’t care about the effect – real or perceived – on those who are never likely to enjoy these benefits, how are you any better than the hated ‘bankers’ who protest higher taxes because (according to the received wisdom) they are good for society but bad for them?

The current immigration debate sees the British metropolitan left doing what it does best – high mindedly pontificating on what’s best for the country and for the less well-off in particular, and then being horrified when those same people actually express ideas and opinions of their own rather than following the script carefully prepared for them.

Immigrants studying for the “Life in the United Kingdom” exam often use the official Home Office approved test preparation book, which contains 408 practice questions to rehearse before subjecting themselves to the real thing. As a result, some newly-arrived immigrants find themselves better versed in fundamental aspects of British life than those of us who have lived here our whole lives.

Those politicians, journalists and activists who still seek to police the immigration debate and preordain its outcome could do worse than studying up on this one, known to every new British citizen:

Is the statement below TRUE or FALSE?

In the UK you are expected to respect the rights of others to have their own opinions.

SPS UK Immigration Life In The UK Test 3

 

 

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Newark And Beyond: What Will It Take To Stop UKIP?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Roger Helmer Newark UKIP

 

If UKIP manages to defy the odds (and the polls) and win the Newark by-election, claiming their first seat in the House of Commons, the achievement will speak for itself – and the strength of the British political earthquake will be confirmed.

But what will a Conservative victory in Newark mean? What will it mean if the Tories squeak across the finish line ahead of UKIP when the votes are counted on Thursday?

The Conservatives will spin a very upbeat narrative, as would be well within their rights. For an incumbent governing party locked into an unpopular coalition and coming off the back of a double mauling in the local and European elections, managing to staunch the bleeding and retain the confidence of the voters of Newark would be just the shot in the arm that David Cameron’s team needs.

But given the extraordinary amount of effort that the Conservatives are expending to beat UKIP (in a race where Labour and the Liberal Democrats are relegated to the status of also-rans), have the Tories blundered by raising expectations so much that anything other than an emphatic Conservative victory will now be perceived as underwhelming, even worrying?

Be in no doubt, the Conservatives are desperate to hold on to Newark in the by-election. David Cameron has ordered all of the key cabinet members to go to Newark to campaign, while prospective Conservative Party candidates for 2015 and beyond have been sternly warned that they will be struck from the list of approved candidates unless they campaign vigorously enough in the town. Meanwhile, the local campaign office has an MP “roll of honour” prominently displayed on the wall, where visiting Tory MPs have to clock in and out. CCHQ takes the UKIP threat in Newark extremely seriously.

But many Tory seats are vulnerable to a UKIP surge in the general election, and no party will be able to mount the kind of desperate scorched-earth campaign against UKIP currently underway in Newark, replicated 30 or more times across the country. If this is what it takes for the Conservatives to halt the UKIP advance in just one parliamentary constituency, how will they cope when all of their incumbents are up for re-election in 2015 and all of their seats in play?

Of course, the opposite could also hold true. Some argue – quite plausibly – that it is the growing, insurgent party that fights best in a single constituency but which will struggle to marshal the resources to compete in multiple constituencies in a national general election. These people certainly have overwhelming evidence from other parties once seen as “the next force in British politics” on their side.

But what they miss – those who still blithely write off UKIP’s future prospects – is the fact that UKIP’s appeal and current performance is very little to do with their party organisation chart or their untried and untested voter mobilisation tactics. Previous insurgent parties such as the SDP were formed from schisms at the top of the establishment; the power of UKIP comes from the grass roots and lies in an idea.

The idea of UKIP is sometimes fuzzy around the edges, is articulated slightly differently by each activist the media might stop and question in the street, and is sometimes expressed forcefully and unpleasantly in a way that the party would not like; but for all that, it has the huge advantage of being small-c conservative without the long half-life toxicity of the Conservative party, unabashedly pro-British and demonstrably not of the “same old” political establishment.

Such is the British public’s current disdain for the same old Westminster political parties with their platitudes and broken promises, and such is the growing desire for a return to conviction politics where ideas and principles actually mean something and are worth arguing about, Britain could now be entering a phase where the country is unusually receptive to new ideas and bold solutions. If this is the case, even Grant Shapps, his computerised voter data models and his army of young student activists may be powerless to stop the advance of Nigel Farage.

We last saw this weariness with the status quo and desire for radical change in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher won election. Back then, the crisis facing Britain was economic and existential – would we continue to allow the trades union and the tired accommodations of the post-war consensus to continue sapping away at Britain’s vitality until there was nothing left but an impoverished, third-rate, failed socialist state.

In 2014, many Britons (save UKIP) do not see an existential threat, but there is nonetheless a crisis of ennui, disengagement, democratic illegitimacy and the return of that 1970s fatalism that says Britain can no longer prosper without pooling political sovereignty with Europe on the unfavourable terms of the vanquished.

The Newark by-election campaign is revealing exactly what the revamped Conservative Party machine and ground game is capable of when the Tories really, really want something. Thursday’s result will give the first hint as to whether this will be enough to stop UKIP in 2015.

 

 

UPDATE:  The Telegraph’s James Kirkup appears to be in agreement with this assessment. He writes:

A win in Newark would show that the Tory election machinery is in good nick – or at least that a professional party campaign apparatus can trump a band of amateurs with more conviction than organisation.

And is that the same thing as winning the argument? Have a quick glance at the national opinion polls: the Tory number is hovering around 33, with Labour a couple of points ahead. Remember 2010? Those figures were CON 36 LAB 29. And that still wasn’t enough for a Tory majority.

A win in Newark will solidify Tory optimism about the general election, but it won’t change the awkward fact of national politics: the party still has a long, long way to go to win that majority.

Live-Tweeting The European Election Results

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Live blog European Election 2014 SPS

Real time, Semi-Partisan tweets and analysis of the incoming European election results are accessible here.

There are a lot of moving parts at the moment. As expected, UKIP are performing very well and are still on track to win the vote in the United Kingdom. But interestingly, the Conservative vote is proving quite resilient in many areas – it’s the Liberal Democrats who are haemorrhaging support and staring the possibility of losing all their MEPs in the face.

Nigel Farage appears confident – even jubilant – on television, saying “Who’s to say what UKIP can and cannot achieve in the 2015 general election … Anything’s possible after tonight’s result”.

So far, London is dark – the returning officer is not releasing information from the various London regions individually as they become available, opting to release all of London’s results simultaneously. A much clearer (and more final) view of the new electoral map will be available once we know London’s verdict.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Nigel Farage?

Samuel Hooper13 Comments

Nigel Farage Pint Elections 2014

 

Let’s play pretend.

Suppose that you are a British voter who happened to express admiration for Nigel Farage back in 2010. Your friends were aghast and asked how you could possibly support such an eccentric right-wing oddball, so you kept quiet for awhile, putting your feelings down to maybe not knowing as much about politics as you should, and feeling a bit chastened by the reaction you received.

Imagine that you then found yourself agreeing with Farage and the UKIP position even more on things like immigration and leaving the European Union when the local elections rolled around in May 2013 and the party made headlines for doing so well. Surely now you could admit to your friends and family that you were becoming a fan of this new kid on the block, especially since one in four voters supported UKIP this time around and they were receiving so much press coverage? But once again, as soon as you mentioned your political sentiments people looked at you as though you must have fallen over and hit your head.

Fast-forward to spring 2014. The things that you think are important issues are still not being addressed by the main political parties,and now the European and local elections are coming up. Only UKIP are offering the policy proposals that seem like common sense to you, and they are the only party whose candidates seem able to express themselves freely and persuasively without sounding like they are reading aloud from (at best) a teleprompter or (more usually) the telephone directory. Surely now people must see the appeal of UKIP? Surely now it must be safe to come out?

At the pub one evening, you admit that you are planning to vote UKIP in the European election, and maybe for the local council too. Outrage! That won’t do at all, it’s quite simply the end of the world. Your horrified friends dive for their smartphones, and before you can blink five brightly-lit screens are shoved in your face, each one blaring “top ten” lists of reasons not to vote UKIP, or trumpeting the misdeeds of a dodgy-looking UKIP councillor on the other side of the country.

Didn’t you know? Nigel Farage wants to rescind women’s suffrage! Godfrey Bloom once chartered a Boeing 767 at his own expense and set up a stall at the Notting Hill carnival, offering dark-skinned people £100 each to hop onboard and fly home to Bongo Bongo Land! How can you think of lending your support to people like that? Are you crazy?

You go home in a sour mood and turn on the computer. You’re sure you had more Facebook friends than that this morning. And why have you received nine invitations to “like” the Liberal Democrats and see the amazing work their MEPs are doing in Brussels, protecting the environment and “standing up to the bankers”? Disgusted – and determined never to vote for Nick Clegg’s party again, no matter how much your overbearing aunt cajoles – you switch on the television. The newsreader is reporting that Nigel Farage was hit by an egg while out campaigning earlier that day. “Wow”, you think. “I know just how he feels”.

Election day rolls around. For the past two weeks, every newspaper article and news segment has seemed to be about UKIP one way or another – and none of them positive. But the UKIP you know from looking at the website and talking to the volunteer on the doorstep doesn’t look anything like the monstrous effigy being held up by the media. You decide to quietly vote UKIP, and just not tell anybody about it. To hell with them anyway, you never said a word when they all decided to jump on the bandwagon and grow pretentious hipster beards.

As the election results start coming in, pandemonium breaks out. David Dimbleby has a meltdown in the BBC studio, the swing-o-meter self-destructs in a shower of sparks, the Labour shadow cabinet form an orderly queue to tell Adam Boulton exactly how Ed Miliband led them to disaster and the Tories are cursing you and your kind for costing them their precious flagship councils in Essex.

What’s more, in the space of two breathless minutes, the all-knowing BBC panel packed with manicured, London-dwelling upper-middle class “experts” has solemnly suggested at least five ludicrous reasons why you voted for UKIP:

You were left behind by the modern information economy. Actually no, you have a decent skilled job; you’re not Alan Sugar but it has good prospects and pays the bills.

Your local community looks nothing like it did in 1960 and it’s scary for you to see the change. Well you were born in the 80s, and you managed to take the internet, iPhones and the falafel restaurant round the corner in your stride without wetting yourself in terror, so that probably isn’t the reason.

You feel persecuted for holding on to your traditional values. Hardly. Two of your friends are gay (the first ones to grow the stupid hipster beards, come to think of it) and although you know that some UKIP councillors have said pretty nasty things about gay people, you’re not homophobic at all, that’s not what attracted you to the party.

You feel like no one listens to you, your vote was just a blind stab at the hated political elite. Well it used to feel like no one listened, but Nigel Farage and his party came and listened. A protest vote would be a spoiled ballot paper or a write-in for the Monster Raving Loony Party. What you did was positive and purposeful, a vote for certain policies you agreed with.

You’re angry, you’re furious, you’re consumed with blind rage. Well yes, but only since the start of this election broadcast!

So many reasons offered by the Westminster commentariat, and none of them the simple truth:

You looked at the Conservative platform and you don’t trust them to deliver on the things that they say they would do – the government is failing to meet its immigration targets again, and the Tories already broke one “cast-iron” promise to hold a referendum on Europe.

You looked at Labour and saw a party that hasn’t even accepted that they did anything wrong when they were in government leading up to the recession, who never mention Europe or immigration at all unless you beat it out of them with a stone, and whose leader can’t even eat a bacon sandwich without getting on the front page of the papers for doing it wrong.

You didn’t bother to look at the Liberal Democrats too closely, because you’re not weird and it isn’t 2010 any more.

But you looked at UKIP and found that their policy prescriptions fit your list of concerns rather handily, and gave them your vote because isn’t that precisely how democracy is supposed to work?

Yes! The truth is that you voted UKIP for the same reason that other people voted for their parties – because you thought through the issues and liked UKIP’s policies. Now why is that so hard for the politicians and people in the media to understand?

Now before you stop reading – yes, there was a point to that tortuous exercise in imagination. Consider:

In the aftermath of the election, all that anyone has been able to talk about is the question of how so many people were conned, duped or tricked into voting UKIP. Earnest, well-intentioned (and less well-intentioned) commentators and newspaper articles have been encouraging us to imagine what it must be like to be a UKIP voter, as though the very thought is so alien that ‘normal’ people actually need a tourist guide into the mind of a Ukipper in order to make sense of the election results. Did you know that they are omnivores and base their waking hours on the rising and setting of the sun, just like us? Fascinating!

But does the media (and they are almost all guilty) ever stop to think what it must be like – purely by virtue of subscribing to some fairly commonly held political views – to be talked about as though you are a symptom of a terrible and shameful national venereal disease, or a wayward prodigal child that needs to be rehabilitated back into the family?

Do the newspaper columnists and TV talking heads ever stop to think just how maddeningly patronising they sound to UKIP voters when they write their anguished, hand-wringing columns on what to do about Britain’s awful UKIP problem?

Most of the time, a conservative can read the Guardian or a liberal the Telegraph and not necessarily feel loved and perfectly understood, but at least see their opinions treated with a very basic level of respect. There were no psychological inquests in the Guardian as to why the voters ignored Gordon Brown’s self-evident brilliance in such large numbers and rudely cast him from Downing Street in 2010, the answer was clearly political.

But with UKIP it is different. It is as though believing in UKIP’s worldview and policies doesn’t deserve acknowledgement, understanding and then persuasion by those who vote differently – it requires correction by those who know better. You’re not thinking properly, UKIP voter. If you were, you would have selected from one of our pre-existing bland political flavours.

Only one article (in the Guardian of all places) shows any degree of contrition at all for the way that UKIP supporters were hounded, bullied and vilified in the press over the past few weeks. Apologies are in very short supply, but there is an abundance of smug condescension packaged as expert political analysis.

A host of British politicians have already been wheeled through the television studios to offer their own variants on the standard post-election-upset mea culpa: we hear their concerns, we need to start speaking their language, we need to show that we are relevant to their lives, we need to stop them from being exploited by the far-right.

You can be sure that all the main parties are plotting their next moves already. The only idea missing from all of their plans? Actually talking to UKIP supporters, and treating them as though they are fellow human beings.

To be a UKIP voter watching or reading the news today must feel as though you are a dangerous but valuable specimen kept in a lab, with a curious Guardian reader in a hazmat suit poking you through the safety glass to see how you respond to political stimuli while someone from CCHQ takes notes and a BuzzFeed staffer snaps pictures and adds mocking captions. I CAN HAZ PINT WITH NIGEL NOW?

This can’t be a very pleasant experience – the resultant emotion is likely to be one of immense irritation at being so misunderstood and publicly belittled. In fact, the only thing likely to make the whole damn experience any better is watching Nigel Farage’s smiling face as he sinks another pint and poses for photographs with his victorious local candidates.

It’s the political and media establishment’s turn to play pretend now:

You are that UKIP voter. After being subjected to this barrage of disbelief turned to mockery turned to outrage turned to hate turned to amazement turned to curiosity turned to pity from the big three political parties and most of the press, where do your political sympathies lie, looking ahead to the 2015 general election?

At Long Last, Will The BBC Take Editorial Bias Seriously?

Samuel Hooper7 Comments

Jasmine Lawrence BBC UKIP bias tweet

It is a sign of the times that things which used to cause outrage are becoming commonplace and shrugged off as unimportant, a fuss about nothing. And so it was that barely anyone spoke up when Jasmine Lawrence, the editor of the BBC News Channel – Britain’s most watched news channel – caused a stir by posting a virulently anti-UKIP screed on Twitter (supposedly in a personal capacity) before quietly deleting it when it began to attract negative attention.

The Guardian summarises the incident:

Lawrence, who has now shut her Twitter account, posted a tweet on Wednesday that said: “#WhyImVotingUkip – to stand up for white, middle class, middle aged men w sexist/racist views, totally under represented in politics today.”

The tweet was posted the day before the local and European elections.

Of course, the story was seized upon by the likes of blogger Guido Fawkes, but outrage and indignation at such a flagrant breach of impartiality should not be the exclusive preserve of those on the right. It does no one any good if the national broadcaster, whose one supposed redeeming feature lies in its non commercial and impartial nature, permits its employees to go rogue without consequences.

And this was far from the only example of BBC journalists publicly showing contempt for political parties outside the “big three” – a BBC Radio 4 producer had this to say:

Rosemary Baker BBC election bias tweet

The BBC’s mail-merged response to Semi-Partisan Sam’s complaint (yes, a complaint was justified) came today via email, and read as follows:

Jasmine Lawrence was tweeting from a personal account. She has been reminded of her responsibility to uphold BBC guidelines. She has deactivated her twitter account and will now be playing no part in the BBC’s election coverage in coming days.

Nevertheless, we acknowledge the strength of your complaint and we can assure you that we’ve registered your comments on our audience log. 

Wow, the audience log. That will definitely stop anything like this from happening again.

What the BBC fail to address in their response is the fact that the remainder of the BBC’s election coverage is not the problem. The problem is the fact that Jasmine Lawrence will remain the editor of the BBC News Channel, presumably resuming full duties as soon as the election coverage is completed on Sunday.

Yes, it is certainly likely that she caused editorial harm and biased coverage in the weeks leading up to the election before her ill-advised tweet saw her stripped of her duties, but how much more damage can she now do in the coming year leading up to the general election?

We all have political preferences, and that’s fine. But the Jasmine Lawrence tweet doesn’t just reveal a tendency to lean one way or the other along the political spectrum. The editor of the BBC News Channel clearly has a deeply ingrained, long held antipathy toward UKIP and the people who support that party or agree with its policies.

Are we really supposed to believe that when she walks into the BBC offices in the morning, Jasmine Lawrence takes off her scornful, UKIP-denigrating hat and puts on her cap of unblemished impartiality, and that the decisions she makes regarding story selection, focusing of time and resources, determining which guests to interview, lines of questioning and other matters will not be influenced by the same sentiments that prompted her to call UKIP supporters white, middle aged sexists and racists?

From the muted BBC response so far, it appears that the corporation remains wholly ignorant or disdainful of the outrage that continued examples of personal bias create among its audience and the British population at large.

Rod Liddle captures and distils this outrage in the Spectator today:

‘I’ve fucking had it with these people. They are so smug; they think they know everything and they know nothing. They want a good kick in the face.’

So said a close friend of mine, more usually a Labour voter, before she went out to vote for Ukip earlier today. I think it was the Jasmine Lawrence thing which tipped her over the edge. Jasmine is, improbably enough, the boss of the BBC’s News Channel. She had ‘tweeted’ that Ukip was a sexist and racist party – yesterday.

Of course, she should be sacked. Right now. The BBC’s News Channel is supposedly impartial – that’s what we pay for, an impartial service. Either that or the BBC should accept that all of its employees possess political views and there is no problem in having them aired. But it will not sign up to that more enlightened position because it knows that 90 per cent of them are as smug, and stupid, and bien pensant as Jasmine.

The latest update from Guido Fawkes reports that a memo has been sent to BBC journalists drawing their attention to pre-existing policies on impartiality. The memo reads, in part:

But the guidance is clear when it comes to personal activity: “As a BBC member of staff – and especially as someone who works in News – there are particular considerations to bear in mind. They can all be summarised as: ‘Don’t do anything stupid’.”

I’d also specifically draw your attention to the following section: “You shouldn’t state your political preferences or say anything that compromises your impartiality. Don’t sound off about things in an openly partisan way. Don’t be seduced by the informality of social media into bringing the BBC into disrepute.”

Don’t do anything stupid – a warning issued rather too late, given the fact that the polls have now closed. But the real damage could lie ahead of Lawrence resumes her duties at the BBC News Channel after the election. If she is reinstated, everything you watch and everything you hear on the BBC’s 24-hour news channel will be filtered through the perspective of someone who thinks that the ~30% of voters sympathetic to UKIP are nothing more than Oswald Mosley blackshirt-style fascists in disguise.

If you believe that actions should have consequences, and that the BBC should have as editor of its news channel someone who is at least able to maintain the illusion of impartiality, you can quickly and easily submit an online complaint here.