Breaking media revelation: Cameron secretly wants ‘yes’ vote on EU!

What would we ever do without our lamestream media?

Adam Afriyie’s electioneering inspired calls for an EU referendum to be held before the General Election are back in the ‘news’.  He has managed to push for a vote to bring forward Cameron’s proposed referendum, so his profile has been dusted off as the Mail indulges its fascination for parliamentary spats.

It is there we find that Simon Walters is in ‘educational’ mode, sharing his very special insider insights:

Afriyie hasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of winning Friday’s vote. But merely by forcing a vote on the issue, he could snatch one of Cameron’s Election trump cards from his hand.

The Prime Minister’s ploy of offering an EU referendum in 2017 is his only realistic hope of wooing back fed-up Tories from UKIP and, in turn, his only hope of winning the Election.

A 2014 referendum would wreck that. For all his anti-Brussels rhetoric, Cameron does not want to go down in history as the man who led the UK out of Europe.

And he believes there is far too little time before Afriyie’s chosen date, October 23 next year, to win concessions from Brussels needed to secure the ‘yes’ vote the Prime Minister secretly wants.

No doubt this revelation will cause a great deal of excitement.  Who shared this secret with Walters?  What was behind it being leaked?  Is there a naysayer deep inside Cameron’s inner circle who doesn’t agree with him?  This clearly is clearly big news.  Why it isn’t on the front page is a mystery.  Thank God someone has revealed this to us.

Sarcasm aside, the story offers a smidgen of value as it reinforces the point that Afriyie isn’t doing this because he passionately believes in people having their democratic say or because he wants the UK to withdraw from the EU.  Afriyie’s motives are partisan in the extreme…

I did this because my conscience demanded it.

I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if, out of 650 MPs, not a single MP said, “Hang on a second, we should at least  be trying to get a referendum in this Parliament.”  The Conservatives are sleep-walking to electoral defeat if we don’t have a referendum before 2015.

Some conscience.  Clearly Mr Afriyie is this Parliament’s leader of the self preservation society.

Did Bureau of Investigative Journalism pals network get the David Leigh story pulled?

Arriving late at this party I know, but better late than never.  Having not paid any attention to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (origin of the false Newsnight claims against Lord McAlpine) before today it was interesting to glance through the Who’s Who of that organisation.

The Daily Mail is giving the impression its hacks also haven’t paid any attention to it before today, citing information dating back to 2009 lifted almost verbatim from Roy Greenslade’s blog.  But that’s another story.

What is interesting is that some people taking a first glance see a spider’s web of connections enjoyed by the Bureau’s staff, which appear to transcend the supposed left-right media divide.  But then the left-right divide only exists in the battle of the columnists.  The hacks themselves are, by a huge majority, the usual bunch of socialist ‘intelligensia’ craving advancement to the lavishly paid ranks of the self regarding media elite.  Their track record is one of going after Tories and people on the centre-right of politics.  In fact it’s hard to find anyone the Bureau’s team have gone after where the attack hasn’t come from the left.

This blog has previously highlighted an initially inexplicable Daily Mail decision in August last year to publish a story about David Leigh’s own phone hacking exploits and the news he was facing questioning by police, then completely remove it and attempt to erase it from the public record without explanation or retraction.  The suspicion was that someone at the Mail or with strong influence at the Mail who was close to Leigh had got the story removed.

Now we see that one of the Mail on Sunday’s favourite daughters, Rachel Oldroyd, who spent 13 years at the MoS rubbing shoulders with fellow media travellers, is the Deputy Editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.  Jumping back to Greenslade’s blog we note that another luminary of the Bureau is none other than David Leigh, who was kept company there by his Guardian sidekicks Nick Davies and Mark Hollingsworth.  In fact, having worked on Julian Assange for days to get him to hand over the Wikileaks files, Leigh saw to it the Bureau of Investigative Journalism was given access to them – something that Oldroyd then wrote about.

In the newly recognised best tradition of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, we do not need any actual, you know, evidence in order to give the impression that Oldroyd may have influenced the Daily Mail on behalf of Leigh to get the story taken down.

But it does raise a question.  Is the Bureau of Investigative Journalism really an entity devoted to exposing the truth?  Or is it just a network of old hacks who cover each other’s backs to stop stories reaching the public domain?  We will leave it there and let readers decide for themselves.

Update: The Mail has now updated its story after we pointed out the Greenslade blog post dates back to 2009 they have now put in that caveat (you’re welcome) – but interestingly the revised piece adds that David Leigh, Nick Davies and Heather Brooke all deny any involvement with the Bureau. This is all the more intriguing because as avid Guardianistas who rub shoulders with Greenslade, are we to believe he never mentioned their alleged involvement to them?  If Greenslade was wrong, why did they not correct Greenslade’s assertion in 2009?  Something doesn’t add up.  Perhaps they should now investigate themselves?