Support for the anti-EU lobby in Britain has risen from 19% to half the population in 10 years. Labour ministers feel trapped
David Cameron's early burst of touchy-feely decontamination distracted us from Conservative Europhobia; the likes of Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine remind us that once it didn't have nearly as much purchase on the Tory soul, and it was Labour's ranks that feared the clutches of Brussels. No more: whether it's manifested in an unconvincing belief that Britain can somehow drastically renegotiate its place in the EU, or more straightforward support for complete withdrawal, the vast majority of Conservatives now view the EU with profound antipathy, so ingrained that it arguably forms the most fervent aspect of their creed.
And with good reason. The essential tension in post-Thatcher Conservatism is between, on the one hand, an embrace of economic liberalism and globalisation; and on the other, the enduring self-image as the party of tradition and patriotism. The idea of Europe constantly threatening Britain with – as Margaret Thatcher put it in her legendary Bruges speech – "collectivism and corporatism" is the buckle that fastens one to the other.
But fair play to the Tories: on Europe, a huge share of the public and those the liberal-left scorns as swivel-eyed freaks are in accord. Moreover, if anyone thinks this is a phenomenon restricted to the Thatcherite heartlands, they should have a look at the polling numbers.
In October a Guardian/ICM survey presented its respondents with the scenario of a referendum on staying in, or getting out. For all that swaths of Britain outside the south-east have benefited from EU funding, the figures for those who "definitely" or "probably" wanted out were fairly consistent across the country, and totalled around 50% in the north, the Midlands, Wales, and even Alex Salmond's supposedly quasi-Scandinavian Scotland. Presumably thanks to London, only the south registered anything significantly lower, with 46%.
On Cameron's return from last week's Brussels summit, all this was spectacularly illustrated by the chasm between liberal-left opinion and the wider public. Consider a rapid-reaction poll published in the Mail on Sunday. Was Cameron right to use the veto? 62% said yes. Is it time we got out? Yes, by 48% to 33%, with 19% undecided. More polling in Monday's Times fleshed out the same picture. No matter if those red lines on the City now look like a flimsy pretext to leave the room at whatever cost, or that the prime minister's spokesman was reduced to answering questions about whether Britain will allow the 26 countries that signed up to the eurozone treaty to meet in EU buildings: even half of those who voted Lib Dem in 2010 support the Cameron position. Set against what being so peripheral is likely to mean for our economic prospects, that may suggest a massed deathwish, but there it is.
Now, this could be put down to an age-old belief in splendid isolation and mistrust of continentals. But when ICM asked a similarly worded question 10 years ago, 68% of respondents said that Britain should stay in, against 19% wanting out – a lead of 49 percentage points for pro-Europeans. So what happened?
Clearly, this story fits with the great global corrosion of trust in big institutions that defines the early 21st century, pushed ever onward by such episodes as Iraq, the crash, and now the eurozone crisis. For all that the UK now finds itself in a minority of one, it's worth bearing in mind that the EU is not exactly titanically popular in even its core countries. But there is a specifically British story here, and it needs to be unpicked.
The ever-more hostile tone of the rightwing press, whose hatred of the EU now seems to verge on the psychotic, is so central as to barely need mentioning. Neither can one ignore a huge fillip given to their side of the argument by New Labour's dreadful mishandling of migration from accession states. Try extolling the benefits of the EU to a construction worker whose hourly rate has come down by £3 because of the arrival of eastern Europeans. I have tried: it is a complete non-starter.
Then there is the question of Labour's failure to make the European case when in office. Even with Britain outside the euro, boom times surely presented a good opportunity to begin to convince people of the benefits of Britain enthusiastically playing as full a role as possible – but the case was never truly made. Tony's Ten Years, Adam Boulton's Blair biography, crisply sums up his record: Blair was "a pragmatic and competent manager of Britain's membership of the union without ever committing himself fully to it and … without winning, or even entertaining, the argument in favour of membership with his own electorate." There were perhaps sinister reasons for that: the Downing Street insider Lance Price used his diaries to claim that any changes to Labour's European policy were always subject to discussion with Rupert Murdoch.
As in so many areas, once Gordon Brown was in Downing Street Labour's confusion was laid bare, heightened by its contortions over the Lisbon treaty. In the Guardian archive I found a news story from the doomy autumn of 2007, claiming that Labour ministers suddenly wanted to "speak more positively about the benefits of the EU in the face of the threats of terrorism, globalisation and a more aggressive Russia". It never happened; by that point Brown was so discredited it would have probably made things even worse.
Now, with the euro's woes apparently offering the Europhobes a slam dunk, the legacy of those failures is obvious. Worse still, with the public mood apparently hardening, Labour understandably feels trapped. Watch any interview from the past few days with an opposition frontbencher: they tend to carpet Cameron for his failure, while seeming to agree that Brussels is to be mistrusted.
So, look where we find ourselves: crawling along in the slow lane of a newly three-speed Europe, with no clear idea of where we might be going. There is speculation about the possibility of a general election much earlier than 2015, with Europe as the all-consuming issue. Eventual withdrawal is being talked about as a real possibility. With very good reason, business people of all kinds are crowding on to the airwaves, warning of dire consequences, but the public mood may well prove to be immovable, not least if the euro falls apart. I'll end by quoting Orwell: "The insularity of the English, their refusal to take foreigners seriously, is a folly that has to be paid for very heavily from time to time."