EU Referendum


EU Referendum: we are not wrong


11/11/2015



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When David Cameron, speaking as the Prime Minister of this country delivers a speech telling us that, in our dealings with the EU, we need a "British model of membership", and when he then goes on to tell us that this is "a matter of cardinal importance for the United Kingdom", it is a fairly reasonable assumption that he does actually believe it to be important.

Taking the Prime Minister at his word, I have reported this, and given it some prominence. The words "of cardinal importance" do tend to signify a level of gravitas that should be taken seriously.

When it comes to the media, however, a deep search of the thousands of articles on Mr Cameron's speech yields very interesting results. In my search, the number which specifically mention a "British model of membership" runs to exactly eleven – and most of those only carry the words because they are running verbatim copies of the speech.

In all, there is only one article – one out of thousands – which use the words in an article headline, and that is on the BBC website. Alongside dozens of others, no prominence at all is given by the BBC to its own story.

Nevertheless, there is a continuum to this concept, which goes back in its current form to December 2012, and now culminates in the only credible option that a prime minister can take in order to deliver something of substance in time for the referendum.

Thus, in giving the issue the prominence we have done, we are not wrong. We are not wrong in taking a prime minister at his own word and paying attention to something that he says is of "cardinal importance".

With that being the case, if we are not wrong, that means we are right. And that means that virtually every single pundit (in the legacy media) pronouncing on this issue has got it wrong. We're right. They're wrong. But then, that's not exactly unusual.