Later this month will mark the 10th anniversary of the Brexit referendum.
This month will mark the 10-year anniversary of Britain voting to leave the EU (Image: Getty)
The BBC has been embroiled in a new controversy after facing accusations of bias for claiming that Brexit has damaged the economy. The broadcaster defended its coverage of the issue in November 2024, which prompted a listener complaint over a breach of impartiality.
The corporation’s Editorial Complaints Unit (ECU) disagreed and, in a ruling, reportedly said the “consensus among economists” was that Brexit has negatively impacted the economy. Brexiteers have accused the BBC of being “utterly blinkered by their own groupthink”. So what do you think? Do you think Brexit has damaged the economy? Vote in our poll and join the debate in the comments section.
The complaint was made after Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England governor, appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
Liam Byrne, Labour’s pro-EU former chief secretary to the Treasury, and Sir John Gieve, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, were also interviewed on the show.
The day before, Mr Bailey had made a speech in which he said Brexit was one of the main reasons why the British economy was underperforming.
EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium (Image: Getty)
Mr Byrne and Sir John both agreed with him and the interviewer, the BBC’s Europe editor Katya Adler, did not challenge that argument, according to The Telegraph.
A listener complained the item did not meet the Beeb’s strict impartiality rules, but the ECU pushed back, saying: “Although the guests agreed with Mr Bailey’s observation that Brexit had had a negative effect on the UK economy to date, this was consistent with the consensus among economists and, so far as the ECU was aware, there was no significant body of economic opinion in support of the view that the economic effects had been positive or even neutral.”
The complaint was partially upheld on a lesser issue that Ms Adler did not “acknowledge the alternative case” for improving the economy by pursuing opportunities outside the EU, rather than seeking closer alignment with the bloc as Mr Bailey and the other guests had argued for, The Telegraph reports.
The ECU chief, Fraser Steel, reportedly said in a letter to the complainant’s solicitors that he did not see “a departure from impartiality in the shared assumption that [Mr Bailey]’s diagnosis was broadly correct” regarding Brexit having a negative economic impact.
Lee Anderson, the chairman of Reform UK, told The Telegraph: “It’s no surprise that the BBC has a totally one-sided view of Brexit, they are utterly blinkered by their own groupthink.”
A BBC spokesman said: “The BBC has no view on the economic impact of Brexit and nothing in this finding suggests otherwise.
“The response sets out the context around the item in question, and simply explains the consensus among economists as one of the reasons for not upholding this part of the complaint.”
Later this month will mark the 10-year anniversary of Britain voting to leave the EU.
