What does Britain want?
We have grown so used to the self-serving tawdriness at the top of this government that the latest investigations into probity, or lack of it, are attracting only passing attention. Life is also returning to something like normality after three years knocked out of kilter by the Covid pandemic. All this means that the start of this year is like they used to be, a time for reflection and looking ahead to the what the future might bring.
Anniversaries provide convenient trigger points for thought and there are plenty around. This January marks the 10th anniversary of the Bloomberg Speech in which Prime Minister David Cameron, then leading a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, committed the next Conservative government to holding an in/out referendum on UK membership of the European Union. January 31st will be the third anniversary of Brexit ‘Exit Day’ when at the stroke of 11pm (Midnight Central European Time) Boris Johnson was able to boast that he had got Brexit done. For me there is a personally relevant and culturally significant date next week. 1st February is the fortieth anniversary of the launch of TV-am, the pioneering breakfast station where I began my career in television.
The EU red letter days are not going unnoticed. The Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt visited Bloomberg’s London HQ do inveigh against British “declinism” and commit to find “the opportunities of Brexit”. Next week William Hague – former Remainer, former foreign secretary, former Save The Pound Campaigner, former Tory leader – will give his evidence to a House of Lords Committee on “The Future UK-EU Relationship”. That was also the theme of the report and conference on the Bloomberg anniversary by the UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) think tank, under the heading “Where Next?”.
On the platform three British politicians who served as EU commissioners recalled the day of Cameron’s Bloomberg speech. Neil Kinnock was “filled with dread”. Baroness Cathy Ashton noted how her EU colleagues immediately determined that “leaving was going to be tough”. The Conservative peer Jonathan Hill was unimpressed by the messaging of pro-Europeans: “It will be a little bit worse off outside – not very inspiring”. Alongside them, the veteran British Eurocrat Sir Jonathan Faull pointed out that on both sides “nobody thought through what the consequences would be”. Inside or outside the EU, he suggested the unanswered question remains: “What do the British want?”
The charts in ‘Where Next?’ record the UK’s relative economic under performance since 2016 and the majority now in favour in answer to the hypothetical polling question: “Should the UK join the European Union or stay out?”. This was not a Remainer pity party however. The consensus was that rejoining the EU is not a live issue. The question of Europe no longer features in the top ten political concerns of the public. Rather than refighting or luxuriating in old battles, the recommendation was that politicians should focus on the series of critical deadlines still ahead in the drawn-out process of leaving.
Most pressing is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Belfast Agreement in April. President Biden has effectively made a visit to the UK and Ireland conditional on the EU-UK resolving their protocol differences. If they don’t, “failure could make our relations with Europe still worse”, warned UKICE’s director Anand Menon. If they do, getting the DUP and their Tory allies on board for a reboot of power-sharing at Stormont looks like an even tougher task for the Prime Minister.
Then, on 1st January next year, barring renegotiation, there will be an increase in the proportion of an electric vehicle’s parts which must be manufactured in the UK or EU for tariff free trade under the Trade and Co-operation Agreement. The UK car industry is under more threat that ever following the collapse of Britishvolt’s proposed battery plant. Europe needs co-operation with the UK too in the face of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act which will massively support US green industries.
Further deadlines keep coming between the EU and UK all the way to the expiration of deals on fisheries and energy in 2026 and beyond.
The response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, with its first anniversary on 24th February, has increased co-operation on defence. But the UK cannot count on occupying the leadership role it would like because of the increased demands the defence budget is making on the UK Treasury.
Brexit is primarily a process of dismantling and rebuilding. TV-am does not need to worry about any of that because it was shut down for good at the end of 1992 – to the great satisfaction of the television establishment but leaving Mrs Thatcher “heartbroken”. TV-am’s soul goes marching on, however. It – rather than its beige BBC rival – set the template for daytime television in this country. TV-am brought to an end closely regulated commercial television whereby franchises – also known as “licences to print money” – were handed out to the great and good in the industry. The strike and lockout of technicians was as significant in re-shaping broadcasting as the Wapping dispute was in the newspaper industry.
The launch of TV-am was a casebook of poor management. The BBC only decided to go into breakfast television when TV-am was awarded the franchise for the UK’s first ever breakfast time programming. TV-am’s leading figures at launch were “The Famous Five” TV Stars – David Frost, Michael Parkinson, Anna Ford, Angela Ripon and Robert Key – with Peter Jay, former ambassador to Washington and “cleverest man in Britain” at the top. Few of them had a clue how to set up a TV company but they had high ideals about “the mission to explain”. The BBC opted for TV news veteran Ron Neil. who set up a more popular down-market offering which got on air first.
The TV-am start-up was a commercial disaster and ratings flop. The channel was hated by its supposed colleagues in the rest of ITV, including ITN, because it could suck advertising revenue out of their pool of earnings, which they sold on a federal basis. Much bloodletting at the top ensued at TV-am. This was great for the workers, including me, who just got on making, and learning how to make, television. There was not much grown-up supervision until the arrival of Greg Dyke as editor and the Australian Bruce Gyngell as CEO. Together they shaped what resources and personnel they had available into what became the most successful ITV franchise ever. Inevitably “Eggcup House” studios was eventually not big enough for the both of them. Dyke departed to run other television companies, including the BBC.
The fortieth anniversary of Breakfast Time was overshadowed by the launch’s main female presenter, Selina Scott, recalling the patronising sexism which she endured unhappily at the BBC. By contrast TV-am gave opportunities to many people in their twenties at the start of their careers. My female colleagues in those early years included Kay Burley, Sky News star presenter; Diane Abbot, the first black woman MP; Michaela Strachan of Naturewatch; Ulrika Johnson; Olivia Lichtenstein, the award-winning documentary producer; Gill Hornby, now a best-selling novelist; and the political journalist Jackie Ashley.
As for me, early promotion to political correspondent handed me a ticket to travel around Europe observing Prime Minister Thatcher sparring, amongst others, with Jacques “Up Yours” Delors, the president of the European Commission. Who would have thought then that one day we would be marking these anniversaries in absentia?
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