BBC bias 1: Kinnock’s wild exports claim unchallenged
NEIL KINNOCK was given a platform by the BBC to peddle myths about what he claimed were the ‘seismic’ effects of Brexit.
The former Labour leader and ex– European commissioner appeared on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday to say leaving the EU would be like ‘jumping off a cliff’. He reeled off doubtful economic statistics on the consequences of a ‘leap in the dark’.
Lord Kinnock claimed we sell 51 per cent of our exported goods to the rest of the EU while they sell less than 9 per cent of their goods to us.
In reality, the EU accounted for 47 per cent of our exports last year and 16 per cent of EU exports came here.
The claim was not challenged by the presenter Sarah Montague. ‘So much for BBC balance,’ said Tory MP Andrew Bridgen. ‘It looks as if Kinnock’s volte face since his 1975 opposition to Europe could be linked to the BBC’s interests – both receive huge amounts of money from the European Union.’
Lord Kinnock had told Radio 4: ‘The choice in the referendum is whether we stay in or come out; whether we jump off the edge of the cliff.’
He warned that leaving the EU would ‘propel us towards an absolutely unknown, uncertain future in which our economic stability and indeed our political significance is hugely put at risk and diminished’. He said David Cameron should be more like Margaret Thatcher: ‘If he had taken a leaf out of the book written by Mrs Thatcher when she was prime minister.
‘Her commitment in the European Union was very firm. The commission that she gave to our civil servants and other representatives inside what was then the European Community was to get the best possible deal.’