All Out War by Tim Shipman

Author:Tim Shipman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2016-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

17

Aunty Beeb

Craig Oliver was furious. He had just tuned in to his first BBC bulletin of the day, and his former employers were leading with a row orchestrated by Vote Leave. Four senior Tories had issued a statement accusing the Bank of England of ‘peddling phoney forecasts’. Just as Stronger In promoted the views of experts to bolster their case that cutting ties with Brussels would damage the economy, so Vote Leave sought to rubbish them. But in twenty years around broadcasting, Oliver did not think he had seen anything like this. In a joint letter, Michael Howard, Nigel Lawson, Norman Lamont and Iain Duncan Smith – two former Tory leaders and two former chancellors – said the Bank and the Treasury were guilty of ‘startling dishonesty’ for claiming a Brexit vote would plunge Britain into a recession.

The day before, Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank, had issued a fresh warning that the pound would slide on the currency markets if Britain was to vote to leave. That had prompted an accusation from Boris Johnson that Carney was ‘talking Britain down’, and was effectively part of the Remain campaign. ‘We’re obviously going to be hearing Project Fear moving into its final fusillade,’ said Johnson. The letter was now effectively accusing Carney of politicising the Bank. The four grandees accused the Bank of England and the Treasury of peddling phoney forecasts and scare stories to back up the attempts of David Cameron and George Osborne to frighten the electorate into voting Remain.

Oliver, as he did most mornings, picked up the phone, dialled a number he knew well and made his views known to a senior BBC executive. He expected a story like that to get big play in the Brexit-backing newspapers, but not on the BBC. No formal complaint was issued – Oliver preferred to do these things informally – but he believed the Corporation had misunderstood its role in the referendum campaign, and was all too often giving air time to stories from Vote Leave that were untrue or nonsensical, and rather than call them out, news bosses attempted instead to balance the volume of coverage. Bluntly, he told his contact that the BBC should not be giving credence to a claim that the Bank was taking sides, and called the decision to lead on the attack on the Bank ‘the nadir’ of BBC coverage. A Downing Street source said, ‘When Craig woke up and heard they were accusing the Bank of England of peddling false information as part of a conspiracy to keep us in the EU, it seemed to him that was a patently ridiculous thing to say, and it was incumbent on an organisation that is supposed to be impartial to question the impact they were giving such a statement by leading on it.’

Oliver had held deep concerns about the BBC’s coverage since the time of the deal, but it became a particularly acute problem once purdah kicked in and the ‘short campaign’ began. He believed

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