Blog: 'a mistake'? Not so, Gordon

Last Modified: 15 Apr 2008
By: Lucy Manning

"A mistake ... a misreading of the situation ... wrong." Not exactly the best reviews from the prime minister about my report last week that he wasn't going to the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

Mr Brown says in his interview with Jon Snow today:"Channel 4 said I'd changed my mind.

"I'd always made it clear I was going to the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games and I think you misread the situation, you misunderstood it."

Well, on one point Number 10 was exactly right - I was indeed suggesting he hadn't made his position clear.

Yet nowhere in the programme last week - not in my my report, not in the programme's headlines, and not in Jon's questions to the interviewees following the report - nowhere, did we say the prime minister had changed his mind.

We said Downing Street had clarified the situation, that Downing Street had confirmed he wasn't going to the opening ceremony, that "Mr Brown has until now never made it clear he wouldn't be going to the opening ceremony even when pressed."

All those things, I still stand by.

And Downing Street today, when I called asking them to clarify Mr Brown's accusation that we'd got it wrong, could only say that we were either suggesting he'd changed his decision or suggesting that not enough had been done to make his position clear.

Well, on that latter point they're exactly right - I was indeed suggesting he hadn't made his position clear.

The story developed like this.

We had commissioned a Channel 4 News poll after the torch relay protests. It found 43 per cent of people thought the prime minister shouldn't attend the opening ceremony in Beijing. It was a legitimate question to ask.

Other leaders including the French President had expressed doubts about attending the opening ceremony.

I asked Downing Street for their response to our poll and for the first time they said explicitly that he wouldn't be going to the opening ceremony.

We reported that, along with their position that it had never been Mr Brown's intention to go, that he had always said he was going to the closing ceremony and couldn't be expected to go to both.

But why had they, or he, never said this before?

He'd twice been asked in the weeks before (once with President Sarkozy) about whether he would go, and he replied in the affirmative about ceremonies (in the plural), never once saying he wouldn't be at the opening ceremony, because he was just going to the closing ceremony.

Was it just Channel 4 News who thought this was a story?

Unfortunately for the prime minister, the answer was no.

The BBC 10 O'Clock News led with it, it was widely picked up by the world's media, and by the end of the day, to Downing Street's exasperation, Hillary Clinton was praising the Prime Minister's decision saying, "I want to commend Prime Minister Gordon Brown for agreeing not to go to the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing,"

In his interview with Jon Snow today , Mr Brown insisted it wasn't true that the Chinese thought he was going to the opening ceremony, and that a statement from the Chinese the next day made it clear he'd never intended to go to it.

But this was the statement the Chinese embassy in London sent me the following day: "It has always been understood by both sides that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is attending the Closing Ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games."

No mention of the opening ceremony, and when I put this to Downing Street a press officer tried to convince me the correct Cantonese-to- English translation should have included the word 'only' i.e. "It has always been understood by both sides that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is ONLY attending the Closing Ceremony of Beijing Olympic Games."

But that's not what their statement said, and the translation was provided by the embassy itself.

As for what the Chinese state media was reporting about Mr Brown's Olympic plans, well - they seemed to be in little doubt.

The official news agency Xinhua, on 28 March reported "British prime minister Gordon Brown, who will travel to Beijing to attend the opening ceremony on 8 August, said in London that Britain would definitely not be boycotting any part of the Beijing games."

And in a report on the very day the prime minister welcomed the Olympic torch in Downing Street, Xinhua reported that "Brown has rejected calls to boycott the Beijing Games on various occasions and confirmed that he would attend the opening ceremony in August."

So if the prime minister thinks he was clear on his Olympic intentions, it seems there were many who were far from sure about what he intended to do.

All Channel 4 News did was report the first official confirmation that he wouldn't be at the opening ceremony. "A mistake...a misreading of the situation...wrong."

Sorry prime minister, but I don't think our report was any of these things.