It’s time the media took a leadership position on the Brexit debate

Just like British politics, our press is also hopelessly divided in trying to make sense of Brexit, writes Raymond Snoddy

We are in a state of stasis – in Parliament, politics and the media.

It is a wonderful ancient word, the opposite of chaos, perfectly describing our current situation – an almost false state of stability where all opposing forces effectively cancel each other out.

There is no agreement on leaving the European Union which can command the support of a majority in Parliament, such is the variety of rifts.

The EU has repeated endlessly to anyone who will listen that the agreement is the agreement and cannot be re-opened for negotiations no matter who turns up in the official British car in Brussels, whether they know how to get out of it or not.

There is little confidence in Prime Minister Theresa May, particularly now that the formal 48 letters are in. If she wins the confidence vote we are back to square one. If not, a six-week self-harming leadership campaign gets under way as the UK slides towards a no deal Brexit, which most “experts” believe would be catastrophic.

The most plausible outcome looks like victory for Mrs May, however narrow, who will then, unlike Mrs Thatcher, down a large whisky and soldier on for at least another year in a state of stasis, wrapping herself in the national interest.

In the midst of such a multi-faceted political crisis it is one of those rare occasions where the media – and the national press in particular – could step into the vacuum and lead the way decisively towards, if not a solution, then a possible way forward.

It’s unlikely to happen because the press too is in a state of stasis, hopelessly divided, trying like everyone else to make some sort of sense of events unprecedented since the Second World War.

The national newspapers are also riven, like society itself, by their stance on Brexit, which undermines any possibility of providing any plausible collective leadership of the debate.

Even the normally raucous Sun cannot make up its mind in its splash. “Time To Letter Go?” – the question mark says it all. In a different edition the paper goes for the car joke: “I Can’t Get Out.”

The Daily Mirror effectively ducks one of big political days of this or many a year by splashing with an important but curiously irrelevant story about eleven year olds selling “zombie drugs.”

Could it be that the paper is embarrassed by what many see as the Labour Party’s abnegation of responsibility on the pressing issue of the day?

For most of the papers it was simply a case of foreshadowing what they weren’t quite sure of – the dreaded 48 letter threshold – with talk of mutiny and moments of reckoning.
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And of course the papers were blindsided by the timing. Writing before the official tally on the 48 letters of no confidence was announced, they found it difficult to lead on the May issue.

The vote will be done and dusted before the national newspapers, as opposed to their websites, will have had their say.

As it often is these days, the position of the Daily Mail is the most interesting given its Paul Dacre past. “The Vultures Are Circling” gives a clear indication of what the paper thinks about those trying to unseat Theresa May. Where once there were wreckers, traitors, enemies of the people and Remoaners, now the hard Brexiteers are the “vultures.”

Oh the longing to have Paul Dacre back for a single day as Daily Mail editor just to see what he would have done with the the front page. You can be sure that it would be very different.

The paper’s comment is curiously restrained, focusing mainly on how well the economy is doing – certainly compared with most of the rest of Europe.

The best the Mail can manage – hardly full-throated – is that the plotters should “take a step back – and pause before wielding the knife.”

The first Times leader doesn’t do much leading to complement what, for the paper, was the latest news: “May puts on brave face as Tories prepare fatal blow.” The paper’s analysis is perfectly reasonable but scarcely blood-stirring.

“Her only real chance of saving her deal and her job is to call a referendum. But she has vowed not to do that and even this option has so many unpalatable elements. It increasingly looks as if the Tories will find a leader who will opt for delay, a referendum or the mis-named “managed” hard Brexit.”

Ho Hum.

The flurry of no confidence letters was, of course, provoked by the Prime Minister’s decision to pull the vote on her agreement after days of debate and days of insisting she would not pull the vote.

All of which leaves the Sunday Times’ exclusive last week to stand as a journalistic curiosity, or more precisely ask when is an exclusive, strictly speaking, true.

The splash by Tim Shipman and Caroline Wheeler was a powerful piece of work and predicted with stunning precision that Mrs May would postpone the vote and head for Europe to try to “handbag” Brussels in the Thatcher manner, in a last-ditch attempt to achieve a better deal.

Except that Downing Street denied the story was true, a line slavishly reported by the BBC. On Broadcasting House we were advised to take the story with a large pinch of salt because it had been denied.

What was going on? Was Downing Street lying, or indulging in semantics – that the decision had been informally taken but not officially, finally so.

Usually the unwritten rule is to rebuff true stories by denouncing them as “speculation.”

And what to make of Environment Secretary Michael Gove’s performance on the Today programme the morning before the volte-face?

Asked whether he was 100% certain the vote would go ahead, Gove replied “absolutely.”

Unless Gove was being disgracefully loose with the actualité, he was hung out to dry by a Prime Minister changing her mind later that morning.

So unless the Sunday Times is capable of mind-reading, Downing Street could – just – get away with a denial.

Ultimately the story was proved to be true, which is of course the main thing, and you can have a scoop of analysis and probability even if the headline is hardened a tad.

On the main game once the dust has settled, or not, after the leadership vote of confidence, it is surely time for the media, or that part of it allowed to have an opinion, to step up to the plate and do something about the state of paralysed stasis.

Let’s go for a scoop of analysis. The May deal is toast and there is no majority in Parliament for no deal.

So the papers should get behind a new referendum – vigorously – call it an exclusive and sit back and wait for all the other options to fall away, whoever is in Downing Street.