Here is a very simple, media-centred example of what the word “negotiation” means. Nearly five weeks ago, 92% of the journalists’ union at the Financial Times voted to strike because the paper’s new owners, the Nikkei Corporation, had decided to take £4m out of their pensions pot to pay the rent. Cue “anger” and much talk of “robbery”. But cue also revised offers, more meetings and (still continuing) negotiations. The time of public threats has passed, at least for the moment; the weeks of closed doors and haggling take over. And, of course, reporters and subeditors in this particular wrangle could be junior doctors in another. Demands turn to concessions turn to settlements. It’s what happens. It is the essential ingredient of negotiation.
But David Cameron’s EU negotiations – splattered in cries of failure and feebleness across most of the press during and after, because minds were made up long before – aren’t negotiations in any familiar sense of the word. There’s a bilious cacophony, a running commentary of derision. There are opinion polls with or without “undecideds” attached (but definitely without any firm proposition to vote on as yet). Which may be politics, especially EU politics, but has nothing to do with normal disputes or indeed normal referendums like Scotland’s opportunity to vote in or out. We’re stuck, as so often before, in the old Brussels routine where the nearest thing you can find to a photo-opportunity is Laura Kuenssberg shouting rhetorical nothings at a passing PM.
Sensible journalists (and campaigners) might cut the cackle until the morning after the final night before when, in the way of the EU, everything becomes clear. But hey! even the FT doesn’t find that sauce for the gander.
■ Imperva, the cyber security experts, report that the latest Star Wars is so big that internet traffic dwindled at the time of the first screenings: France down 8%, Russia down 6.9%, the UK off 8.7% and Germany down a walloping 11.7%. And, scanning print front pages across the franchise universe, you can sense triumph and monstrous profitability as the force returns in The Hype Awakens.
