President’s Press Conference, The White House, 16 February 2017
... And just while you’re at it, because you mentioned this, Wall Street Journal did a story today that was almost as disgraceful as the failing New York Time’s story, yesterday. And it talked about – these are… front page.
So director of national intelligence just put out, acting a statement, any suggestion that the United States intelligence community, this was just given to us, is withholding information and not providing the best possible intelligence to the president and his national security team is not true. So they took this front page story out of The Wall Street Journal top and they just wrote the story that its not true. And I’ll tell you something, I’ll be honest, because I sort of enjoy this back and forth that I guess I have all my life but I’ve never seen more dishonest media than frankly, the political media. I thought the financial media was much better, much more honest.
But I will say that, I never get phone calls from the media. How did they write a story like that in The Wall Street Journal without asking me or how did they write a story in The New York Times, put it on front page? That was like the story they wrote about the women and me, front page, big massive story. And it was nasty and then they called, they said we never said that, we like Mr. Trump. They called up my office, we like Mr. Trump, we never said that.
And it was totally — they totally misrepresented those very wonderful women, I have to tell you, totally misrepresented. I said give us the retraction. They never gave us a retraction and frankly, I then went on to other things.
...
Tony Blair's Speech on Brexit for Open Britain, London, 17 February 2017
... There is an effective cartel of media on the right, which built the ramp for pro-Brexit propaganda during the campaign; is now equally savage in its efforts to say it is all going to be ‘great’ and anyone who says otherwise is a traitor or moaner; and who make it very clear to the PM that she has their adulation for exactly as long as she delivers Brexit.
It hugely skews the broadcast coverage. For example, a week ago there was the annual survey of top business bosses of the leading UK companies. Over half said Brexit was already having an adverse effect on their business. And half did not have confidence in the Government negotiating a good deal. It led the FT. It was barely covered elsewhere. The BBC had it as an item of business news. Suppose the survey had come to the opposite conclusion. It would have had at least 4 papers headlining it and would therefore have featured prominently on the broadcasts.
...
18 February 2017
15 February 2017
Brexit: London Boroughs and MPs
In a post here in January about the 2016 Richmond Park parliamentary by-election, I pointed out that
“Anyone who attempts to look at [the relationship between the by-election and the 2016 EU Referendum] will encounter a problem: the Referendum results in London were reported at borough level, not by parliamentary constituency”
and that I would
“provide some further analysis of the London boroughs and the parliamentary constituencies within their boundaries”
so here it is, for what it’s worth.
What constitutes London? Its orbital motorway, the M25, might provide a clear physical boundary but many people outside it earn their living in the city and its area assessed in terms of economic impact spreads a long way. For political purposes London is the combination of its 32 Boroughs with, at their centre, the City of London, both of these having Mayors. Within that London, there are 73 Parliamentary Constituencies (PCs). However, the City of London does not have its own MP, sharing one with next-door Westminster. So, for the purposes of most of what follows, I have combined the separate Referendum results for the Borough of Westminster and the City into “Westminster and City of London”.
A further complication is that 10 of the PCs straddle two LBs, Richmond Park being an example with its voters in Richmond upon Thames and in Kingston upon Thames. The table below shows how seats are distributed across the boroughs, 18 out of 32 sharing a PC with another. After the 2015 election the majority of London seats were Labour, and there was only one Liberal Democrat.
The 18 LBs and 10 PCs are shown below:
The 2016 EU Referendum introduced a new dimension into UK politics. The most pro-Remain area in the UK was Lambeth LB at 78.6%, 30.5% more than the UK average. But another London borough, Havering, at 30.3% was 17.8% below. 369th of the 380 UK reporting areas, Havering was almost as inclined to Leave as Boston in the East Midlands, the 380th at 24.4% Remain. The Remain and Turnout percentages for the LBs are shown in the chart below:
The chart shows that in London with exceptions (eg Richmond upon Thames) the relationship between Remain and Turnout was slightly inverse: that is to say, as the first went down, the second went up.
Across the UK, turnout for the Referendum in 2016 at 72.2% was higher than in the previous year’s general election at 66.4%. This was the case in most of the London PCs, but not all:
The LBs where turnout was less in 2016 than that of constituent constituencies in 2015 are shown below:
The Lewisham turnout reduction is unusual, involving all three of the PCs in the borough.
Finally, the chart below brings together the 2016 Remain results for the LBs (measured relative to the UK outcome – x-axis) and the majority in each of the PCs in 2015 (y-axis), both being percentages. PCs spread across two LBs are denoted with hollow bullets and linked with dotted lines. The outcomes of the two London by-elections in 2016 (Tooting just before the Referendum and Richmond Park nearly five months later) are indicated by the vertical arrows leading to stars.
The bullets with green shrouds indicate the PCs of MPs who voted against exercising Article 50 on 8 February. Not surprisingly, these represented constituents from LBs that had favoured Remain. The Lib Dem MP for Carshalton and Wallington is a notable exception. The MPs for the two PCs with voters in boroughs with marked differences in attitude to Remain (Erith and Thamesmead in both Bexley and Greenwich and Ruislip Northwood and Pinner in both Harrow and Hillingdon) did not vote against Article 50.
What constitutes London? Its orbital motorway, the M25, might provide a clear physical boundary but many people outside it earn their living in the city and its area assessed in terms of economic impact spreads a long way. For political purposes London is the combination of its 32 Boroughs with, at their centre, the City of London, both of these having Mayors. Within that London, there are 73 Parliamentary Constituencies (PCs). However, the City of London does not have its own MP, sharing one with next-door Westminster. So, for the purposes of most of what follows, I have combined the separate Referendum results for the Borough of Westminster and the City into “Westminster and City of London”.
A further complication is that 10 of the PCs straddle two LBs, Richmond Park being an example with its voters in Richmond upon Thames and in Kingston upon Thames. The table below shows how seats are distributed across the boroughs, 18 out of 32 sharing a PC with another. After the 2015 election the majority of London seats were Labour, and there was only one Liberal Democrat.
The 18 LBs and 10 PCs are shown below:
The 2016 EU Referendum introduced a new dimension into UK politics. The most pro-Remain area in the UK was Lambeth LB at 78.6%, 30.5% more than the UK average. But another London borough, Havering, at 30.3% was 17.8% below. 369th of the 380 UK reporting areas, Havering was almost as inclined to Leave as Boston in the East Midlands, the 380th at 24.4% Remain. The Remain and Turnout percentages for the LBs are shown in the chart below:
Across the UK, turnout for the Referendum in 2016 at 72.2% was higher than in the previous year’s general election at 66.4%. This was the case in most of the London PCs, but not all:
The LBs where turnout was less in 2016 than that of constituent constituencies in 2015 are shown below:
The Lewisham turnout reduction is unusual, involving all three of the PCs in the borough.
Finally, the chart below brings together the 2016 Remain results for the LBs (measured relative to the UK outcome – x-axis) and the majority in each of the PCs in 2015 (y-axis), both being percentages. PCs spread across two LBs are denoted with hollow bullets and linked with dotted lines. The outcomes of the two London by-elections in 2016 (Tooting just before the Referendum and Richmond Park nearly five months later) are indicated by the vertical arrows leading to stars.
The bullets with green shrouds indicate the PCs of MPs who voted against exercising Article 50 on 8 February. Not surprisingly, these represented constituents from LBs that had favoured Remain. The Lib Dem MP for Carshalton and Wallington is a notable exception. The MPs for the two PCs with voters in boroughs with marked differences in attitude to Remain (Erith and Thamesmead in both Bexley and Greenwich and Ruislip Northwood and Pinner in both Harrow and Hillingdon) did not vote against Article 50.
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