Yes, the Leave campaign was dishonest and some have argued criminally irresponsible; but are British pro-Europeans blameless, asks Eunice Goes. Political parties have for years avoided any discussion on the positive aspects of the EU, they rarely explained how the UK benefits from EU investment, all while the Eurosceptic press was capitalising on fictitious stories about migration and sovereignty. It is this culture of embarrassed pro-Europeanism that made the toxic, and in the end victorious Leave campaign possible.
British pro-Europeans are in mourning. Many are still in denial over the result of the referendum on Britain’s EU membership. More than four million people signed a petition asking for a second referendum. Thousands gathered in Parliament Square holding ‘We Love the EU’ placards. In the meantime, the Labour MP David Lammy echoed the thoughts of many of his shocked colleagues when he asked for Parliament to ‘stop this madness’ because the referendum was only ‘advisory and non-binding’. Even the coolest heads in constitutional law are trying to find ways to prevent the triggering of Article 50 which will start the process of Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.
For European observers of Britain, this frenetic activity and outpouring of EU-passion is somewhat bewildering. Where had the British Euro-enthusiasts been hiding all this time? In its 43 years of membership of the EU, Britain never showed much affection let alone fervour for the European project. Instead, British political elites presented Europe as an entanglement that was necessary for economic reasons but which implied the acceptance of what were perceived as the Byzantine, inefficient, and down-right bizarre ways of doing business of continental Europeans.
Governments of all colours were complicit in the presentation of the EU as a combination of Soviet dirigisme with an anarchic (and definitely Mediterranean) madhouse. The outgoing British Prime Minister, David Cameron liked nothing better than a good fight with Brussels’s faceless bureaucrats about any issue that would grant him a positive coverage in the Eurosceptic press and a good reception in the Conservative backbenches.
Similarly, Labour (officially a pro-European party) has had great difficulty in showing any emotional attachment to the European project. More often than not, the behaviour of Labour politicians (Tony Blair was the most notable exception) towards the EU was a manifestation of either embarrassment – expressions of European idealism were seen as both un-British and unsayable in front of the Murdoch/Dacre newspapers – or impatience with Brussels bureaucracy, and sometimes of both. When the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown missed the ceremony to sign the Lisbon Treaty, he was both avoiding being caught in an embarrassing photo-op and showing his lack of patience with European diplomacy. Even the former liberal-democrat leader Nick Clegg, one the most pro-European voices in Britain, couldn’t refrain from demanding the ‘end of any unnecessary meddling’ from the EU.
In the rare occasion when a politician decided to make the case for the EU, it was always clothed in reformist language. As the Financial Times commentator Wolfgang Münchau aptly put it, the pro-European voices could never ‘find it within themselves to say anything nice about the EU. They have to reform it first’. In other words, the EU could only become a worthy institution if it agreed to reforms that would make it look more like Britain.
As an unloved institution, the EU was always discussed (and therefore perceived by the public) in transactional terms. The European project was presented by most of the British press, as a zero-sum-game with the rest of Europe. And this was the most benign media coverage that the EU could get in Britain. Every other day, the stories about the EU were either about crazy and fictitious health and safety regulations, or about Imperial Brussels.
In this context, voters could only see the ‘warts and all’ of the EU (and they are many: the Eurozone crisis and the migration/refugees crisis are hardly good advertising campaigns for the European project), but never its positive aspects. Very few politicians bothered to list the many ways whereby the EU had improved the quality of their lives. Caroline Lucas from the Green Party and the SNP’s leader Nicola Sturgeon were the only voices that dared to make a positive case for Europe. But their voices were barely audible in the cacophony of Europhobia or euro-embarrassment.
This reluctant embrace of Europe was all too apparent during the referendum campaign. The Prime Minister David Cameron and THE Chancellor of Exchequer George Osborne are soft Eurosceptics, and so their defence of EU membership was never heartfelt. In fact, their case for Remain was almost entirely based on apocalyptic predictions of what could happen in the event of Brexit.
Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing Euroscepticism is well documented, but it is also true that it was difficult to find a Labour voice that had, as Münchau put it, ‘nice things to say about Europe’. In fact, Labour’s position could be summed up in the following slogan: ‘The EU is not perfect but we should stay in to reform it’. With such uninspiring message it is not surprising that so many Labour supporters voted to Leave the EU.
If pro-Europeans were unable to express any enthusiasm or affection for the EU, there was passion aplenty in the Leave camp. For at least three decades, the Eurosceptic press’s daily output of scary stories about the EU prepared the ground for the poisonous and misleading Leave campaign. Adding the promise of ‘taking back control’ and of an ‘independence day’ was the demagogue’s stroke of genius that made Brexit a reality. But it is also clear that Britain’s embarrassed pro-European politicians paved the way for this result. Their timidity and lack enthusiasm convinced many that EU membership was not a cause worth fighting for.
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Eunice Goes is Associate Professor of Politics, Richmond American International University.
Image credit: frankieleon CC BY
“Political parties have for years avoided any discussion on the positive aspects of the EU, they rarely explained how the UK benefits from EU investment”
For a net contributor to the EU such as the UK, there’s no such thing as EU investment
It’s our money after the EU has taken 50% cut !
I agree with much of this, unfortunately. Nothing illustrates this better than our elected MEP representatives (many of the UKIP persuasion) who, happy to take the EU shilling and indulge in the comfortable Brussels lifestyle, were intent on the whole project sinking. Their attendance at meetings was pitifully infrequent so precious little reform was obviously intended. There are many reforms necessary, not least of which is corruption, but I sincerely believe that, with commited representation, a better and fairer EU can be forged.
There appears to be an endemic media loathing of the EU system whereby, in 43 years no positive news stories about the good work done in the name of EU was ever reported. Is Rupert Murdoch behind this? I don’t know. But it has worked. People of Britain are blissfully unaware of EU projects, despite blue placards advertising EU funding. Citizens have been filmed in front of these blue boards, proclaiming they were unaware of the EU ever doing anything for their community. This seems to indicate am inate unwillingness to be part of the club, regardless of its influence. This, to me is incomprehensible, isolationist and very sad.
i Hi Eunice,
Most Bremainers are missing the point.
There’s overwhelming agreement between Bremainers and Brexiters on one point – we don’t want to be part of the project. My – fairly extensive – anecdotal experience is that Bremainers reject that idea as vehemently as Brexiters. We were offered the choice of being half-out or wholly-out of the EU. When half-outers were asked why they thought we should be half-out the response was that they wanted to be close enough to pick cherries but sufficiently distant not to be involved in the car-crash. None ever expressed a reason other than venality.
The unappealing nature of the EU has far more explanatory value than the Bremoaner self-validating narratives currently doing the rounds. Fortunately, a majority were able to take a principled position.
Much of the blame lies with British TV. As a junior producer working for a large UK production firm, I put forward a proposal for a documentary about the role played by EU institutions in British economic and cultural life, something which to my amazement had never been done before. I offered examples and a highly qualified, lively expert presenter, but the response was crushing: “The EU is boring, girl, nobody would watch it.”
This was a good twenty years ago, but I cannot recall any such programme being screened since. Instead, viewers got their ideas about the EU from profit-geared bodies keen to discredit its efforts to protect workers and consumers, or from comedies such as “Yes, Minister”, which caricatured it as a body determined to only allow in straight-shaped bananas. Given this situation, the outcome of the Referendum was not a surprise.
I am personally quite confused by this article. The case for Europe has to be realistic, not half-hearted and not rose-tinted. What was required was to set out a vision of what Britain would be within Europe and how Europe benefits from what we have to offer.
The article appears to place far too much weight on politicians, whom carried less and less credibility with the public with each day towards the referendum. Those who trusted them the most were almost always pre-determined in how they would vote. This is my supposition.
There was also a chronic and collective failure in being honest with the British public. On matters like trade, intelligence sharing, skills sharing, labour markets, refugees, defence co-operation, people needed to know the facts, not the narrative. Those facts include where European action could have been better. Instead informed discussion was drowned out by the equivalent of pub bores through newspapers unconstrained by IPSO from their demagoguery.
Saying that Nick Clegg is one of the most pro-European politicians in UK does not contradict the statement that Sturgeon and Lucas were the only ones to make a positive case (and consistently for the EU throughout the campaign. One of the most is not the most. And if you read the article correctly, making a positive case for EU is not the same as being pro-European. EU membership was defended as a lesser of two evils, as a necessity not as something that is desirable.
Only Caroline Lucas and Nick’s Sturgeon made a positive case, despite saying Nick Clegg is one if the most pro-Europe voices in Britain? I’m confused.
He has made numerous positive interventions over the years (such as bravely putting a positive case going into the 2014 European Parliament elections, and delivering a ‘rousing’ speech in a debate against Nigel Farage in the OU debate in 2015) as have many Lib Dems including Paddy, Shirley, Tim etc, while the Greens have sustained a misleading/misinformed anti-TTIP agenda recently and only begrudgingly supported the in campaign, while their peer Jenny Jones supported the out campaign. I’ve personally heard Caroline Lucas saying her party was rather lukewarm on the EU and also talking of the need for reform, as to be fair you’d expect any sensible person to.
I hope you are not confusing what you have heard with what has been said and done, given we have of course received less coverage since May 2015. The Lib Dems have long been acknowledged as the most pro-European party in the UK.
Having been part of the Lib Dem #INtogether campaign, the most positive and committed In campaign from any political party, this comment has stuck in the craw somewhat. We’ve always been instinctively and positively pro-Europe, and the odd mention of reform (common sense dictates it needs reform and you can’t ignore that fact while talking to the public) here and there doesn’t change that.
Going forward it is also clear that we are taking a positive and committed lead on campaigning to remain in, or rejoin the EU. If anyone shares that desire I’d encourage them to join the many thousands (likely to be tens of thousands when all is said and done) who have joined us in the last week, and are continuing to join at a rate that lets us dare hope there is still significant, strong Europhile sentiment amongst the British public.