Friday 5 June 2015

A Referendum Prediction

If I was even more cynical I might believe that we're already seeing the strategy put in place to ensure that the forthcoming EU referendum goes the way it's supposed to. The Daily Mail recently reported that Rupert Murdoch has changed his stance on EU membership and will no longer campaign for an Out vote. I'm not quite sure if Murdoch has ever explicitly said that he would campaign for an Out vote, but in my experience his titles tend to take basically the Tory line on the matter of the EU. That is to say they go in for the faux-patriotic bombast best illustrated by the famous Up Yours Delors headline, yet stop short of advocating actual withdrawal.

My prediction is that the Murdoch press will continue to tell us plenty about the shortcomings of the EU, the intransigence of our partners and the musings of "bonkers Brussels bureaucrats" while lauding Cameron as a Churchillian figure, fighting against the odds for good old British common sense. When the final deal is announced and the referendum is upon us the Murdoch papers will strongly endorse whatever Cameron has claims he has negotiated (almost certainly very little), and they will back a vote to stay in.

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