Mr Bailey had made a speech at London’s Mansion House the day before, arguing that Brexit was one of the main reasons the UK economy was not performing as well as it should have been.
The other two guests agreed with him, and Ms Adler failed to challenge the premise. When a listener complained that the item had fallen short of the BBC’s rules on impartiality, its editorial complaints unit (ECU) disagreed.
In a ruling, the ECU said: “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.”
It means the BBC regards economic damage from Brexit as a settled fact that does not require a debate or a balancing view, in the same way that it regards man-made climate change.
The complaint was partially upheld, but only on a lesser complaint that Ms Adler had failed to “acknowledge the alternative case” for improving the economy by exploring opportunities outside the EU rather than seeking closer alignment with the bloc, for which Mr Bailey and the other guests had argued.
In a letter to the complainant’s solicitors, Fraser Steel, the head of the ECU, said he did not see “a departure from impartiality in the shared assumption that [Mr Bailey]’s diagnosis was broadly correct” about Brexit damaging the economy.
