When a General election changes the governing party the media changes its mainstream agenda from the preoccupations of the outgoing government to the priorities of the incoming government. Media reflects the will of the people and the shift of power. Of course it allows the Opposition a say, and the Parliamentary Opposition battles to get some of its priorities onto the media as a challenge to the government. The Opposition gets more attention as the unpopularity of a government increases and or as another election approaches.
Most of the media have failed to reflect this sensible democratic approach to news over the Referendum. Most of them have carried on accepting as news and stories a series of tendentious or mendacious forecasts, predictions and non stories from the Project Fear stable as if the Referendum campaign were still underway or as if Remain had actually won. In this they reflect the Labour opposition. Elected on a Manifesto that said they accepted the result and would work towards the UK leaving the EU, Labour has instead spent the last seventeen months putting the case in the Commons for staying in the EU directly, and being remorselessly negative about leaving the EU at every available opportunity. Within the government the Chancellor and the Business Secretary have also delighted in highlighting gloomy and inaccurate forecasts of what might happen instead of seizing the many opportunities Brexit brings to lower taxes, cut tariffs, improve laws and promote more domestic business.
It is no wonder there is an ever growing gulf between most Leave voters and the Parliament and media which talks at them daily in discordant tones. We are constantly being told we were too stupid to understand what we voted on, that we never voted to leave the customs union and single market which were always an integral part of EU membership which we rejected, and that we should be asked again because we must by now have changed our minds. If an entirely false forecast of a mild recession after the vote would not make us vote Remain in the Referendum, maybe a even more false forecast (called a scenario) of a massive recession after we leave will force us to cry out for a second ballot.
It’s high time those of us who believe in Brexit and have many positive things to say about our regaining our freedom and lifting our growth rate once out were allowed some airtime. There is no indication that this will happen, leading to more people to turn off the BBC news and cancel their subscriptions to the Daily Mail. It as if all the opportunities from Brexit did not exist for most of the media and all too many MPs. The Leave voting public have more vision than the establishment.
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