MEDIA STUDIES
The FT's Mr Stephens wrote it, but the City only noticed when the FT's young Mr Peston did too
STEPHEN GLOVER
The stock market soars by £30 billion in a day, equivalent to the annual gross domestic product of Hungary or Peru. The pound falls by four pfennigs against the deutschmark. Fortunes are made and lost. The chancelleries of Europe quake. And why? Because Robert Peston, the political editor of the Financial Times, writes a story which says that the government is leaning more towards monetary union, and will soon announce that Britain may join short- ly after its launch in 1999.
All this happened last Friday. My first thought was how odd that young Peston, whom I know as a former colleague, should have had such a seismic effect on the mar- kets. I reflected that Mr Peston, who can- not be much more than 35, probably earns £60,000 a year — a fraction of the salaries of the City bankers and traders who ran to buy or sell when they read his story. (The pound went down because membership of monetary union would mean lower exchange rates. Shares soared on the same assumption.) Yet what this single journalist knows, or says he knows, is deemed to be of incalculable importance.
There was no on-the-record interview of a Cabinet minister behind Mr Peston's story, no public statement by any member of the government, no attributable quotes, no mention of time and place. Instead, Mr Peston cited 'a minister' who said, 'It is now clear that we must indicate our willing- ness to be in there [a European single cur- rency]: A few paragraphs later, 'a minister' is quoted along similar lines, and near the end of the story, which is about 600 words in length, 'a minister' is wheeled on for the third time.
The story is open to adverse criticism on several grounds. In the first place, it is not clear whether 'a minister' is one person repeating himself or herself, or three peo- ple with similar views. We can infer that the minister or ministers involved are not members of the Cabinet since, if they were, Mr Peston would surely tell us in order to give his report more weight. But we have no way of knowing whether they hail from the Foreign Office or Treasury, and are consequently close to decisions being made about monetary union, or whether they come from some far-flung ministry uncon- nected with the process. Mr Peston pre- sumably wished to protect the confidential- ity of his source or sources by not mentioning a particular department. As we have seen, these technical short- comings did not worry the City, which reacted as though the Prime Minister him- self had made an official statement about the government's intentions. But the next day, Saturday, the rest of the press was rather sniffy about the Financial Times's story. Downing Street was quoted as saying that the report was 'speculation but wrong', and the Treasury reacted similarly. Antho- ny Bevins in the Independent went so far as to note that Alistair Campbell, the Prime Minister's press secretary, 'speaks with some contempt of the man who wrote the report'. Mr Bevins and Mr Campbell are said to be close.
On Sunday more cold water was poured on Mr Peston. Gordon Brown, the Chan- cellor, told BBC l's Breakfast with Frost, 'The government's position has not changed. This morning we've got nonsense about referendums being held next year, and the rest seems to be pure speculation, and it is not built on any statement that any government minister has made.' Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, was no less emphatic on BBC l's On the Record: 'There has been no change in the government's position . . . no shift in the position that Gordon and I have expressed.'
So did young Peston mislead all those traders and bankers into buying shares and selling sterling? I think not. I say this partly because I know him to be honest, but even if this were not so my suspicions would be aroused by the government's reaction. The only specific, on-the-record denial was to the story in the Sunday Telegraph, not the Financial Times, which said a referendum on monetary union will be held within the next year. It was this that Mr Brown described as nonsense. But neither he nor Mr Cook nor anyone else has explicitly denied the main point of Mr Peston's arti- cle, namely that there has been a shift in government thinking on a single currency, and there may be a statement indicating we might join shortly after its launch. In fact several political journalists with whom I have spoken agree with the thrust of Mr Peston's piece, though they may feel he didn't have quite enough to go on. It is widely accepted in political circles that the government has been gradually altering its policy on monetary union, and that a hith- erto reluctant Mr Cook has been falling into line behind Mr Brown (and probably Mr Blair). The wonder is only that the City had not woken up to this development until Mr Peston told them. Actually, the Finan- cial Times columnist Philip Stephens had made the same point in a recent column, but in such a form his prognostications car- ried less weight. A front-page lead in the Financial Times cuts most mustard with the City.
Young Peston was right. The government is changing its position, but doesn't want us to know yet. Those opposed to monetary union had better wake up.
Victoria Brittain has written to this magazine following my article about her last week. I may respond next week. I would like now to draw readers' attention to a letter published in the Guardian on Tuesday from a group of Africanists of a distinctly left-wing hue. It has the feeling of one of those letters got up by someone — I won't guess who. The signatories com- plained inter alia that 'Victoria Brittain is currently pilloried in some sections of the media with the aid of leaked phone-taps from files to which she has not been given access'. This is delightfully paranoid. There were a couple of news reports about the matter in the Independent some six .weeks ago after the Mail on Sunday broke the story. Otherwise I have written two long pieces in this magazine. Flattering though it may be, the lone voice of The Spectator can hardly be represented as 'some sections of the media'.
Meanwhile I am told that Alan Rus- bridger, editor of the Guardian, is hasten- ing the appointment of a new ombudsman, or readers' representative, from outside the paper. This person is likely to be asked to look into the Victoria Brittain affair. This sounds a bit vague, and it may well be that Mr Rusbridger is trying to kick the matter into touch, but we should welcome any sign that the Guardian is beginning to take this matter seriously.
Previous page
