Douglas Carswell's Blog

Cosy little Westminster

Almost everything that happens in Westminster is conveyed to the world outside via the medium of the Parliamentary press lobby.  Not surprisingly, news reports often tell you as much about the prejudices and preconceptions of the people reporting it as anything else. 

Speaker Bercow asserts the right of the Commons to hold ministers to account? The story gets written up as “angry Tories plot to oust Speaker”.   MPs form a new Eurosceptic group? The headline becomes “Cameron under attack from right”. Economy not growing? The story is reported as “Reckless government cuts”, even if mathematics prove that public spending has actually gone up! 

I witnessed the most extraordinary example of squeezing-the-facts-to-fit-the-narrative yesterday. The political correspondent of a well-known broadsheet asked a minister: “Does having the Lib Dems in the Coalition make it easier to avoid having to do all the unpopular things that some in your party want you to do?” He went on “Unpopular things, like holding a referendum on Europe?”

Only someone who had spent too long in cosy little SW1 could presume that an EU referendum is not popular outside.  

Here is what the 2010 Liberal Democrat election manifesto said about an EU referendum: 

“The European Union has evolved significantly since the last public vote on membership over thirty years go. Liberal Democrats therefore remain committed to an in/out referendum”.

You get that? It was Lib Dem policy to have an in/out vote, yet someone in the Parliamentary press lobby is able to presume that not holding a referendum is all part of the “Cameron under attack from right” narrative.

Perhaps we might be better governed as a country if we opened up the cosy little world of Westminster.

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