19 Jan 2016

Why is the media ignoring the Vote Leave story?

In recent days, the campaign director and co-owner of Vote Leave, Dominic Cummings has written clearly that Vote Leave's plan is for Article 50 - the only legal and treaty-bound method of quitting the EU - not to be invoked after any vote to leave in the referendum. In short, if people vote for Britain to leave the EU, he opposes the only action that can begin the process of leaving. 

Vote Leave director, Daniel Hannan has spoken explicitly about using a leave vote to secure "proper concessions", some form of "associate membership" and seeking an "opt out of some of the areas of EU policy". He has done so more than once. This is a man who people thought wanted to leave the EU, calling only for some piecemeal reforms. That is about staying in the EU, it is not about leaving the EU.

Prior to all this, Vote Leave's CEO, founder and co-owner, Matthew Elliott, went on the record to say that “If the Government gets a two-tier Europe, we’re very much in”. He ran Business for Britain, which had and still has an agenda of Britain staying in a reformed EU, an organisation that then spawned Vote Leave as a vehicle to deliver reform via the leverage of a vote to leave. The intention has never been Brexit. Elliott, Cummings and Hannan never speak of Brexit after a vote to leave, only of 'negotiations' for a new deal.

The Vote Leave campaign is not campaigning to leave.

It is a story.

So where are the bloody journalists? 

Is it that the journalists don't 'get it'? Or is it that the journalists are so close to the Vote Leave team, constantly rubbing shoulders and enjoying congenial conversation with them inside the cosy Westminster bubble, that they don't want to make life hard for their chums by pointing out that Vote Leave is deliberately undermining the objective of leaving the EU?

Decide for yourself.