A new approach to Euroscepticism
Mark Wallace 10:34pm
As was reported over the weekend, we at the TaxPayers’ Alliance have teamed up with Global Vision to launch a new, joint campaign on the EU. Given that the issue of Britain’s relationship with the EU has been fought over so many times in the past, what - CoffeeHousers might be justified in asking - is new with this effort?
The campaign, which will run up to the European Elections in June, will make a conscious break from the issues and language of Eurosceptic campaigns of the past. All the evidence points to the fact that no matter how accurate the sceptical voices of the last 40 years have been, their talk of vetoes, pillars and the acquis communautaire simply does not have strong enough traction with the general public.
Interestingly, whilst the line, verse and philosophy of Britain’s legal relationship with the EU fail to move people, the practical implications of these constitutional issues very much do. Whilst the EU as an issue per se languishes towards the bottom of any poll of the public’s top concerns, the work done in Brussels has a direct impact on many of those more concrete issues further up the list.
Be it bin collections, post offices, law and order, food prices, the economy, migration, provision of schools and hospitals or a host of other things, the EU has a real world impact on day-to-day lives. Particularly with a recession taking hold, we cannot afford to carry unnecessary burdens, and the EU imposes more than its fair share. To that end, the TPA and GV will be publishing regular research papers in the coming months demonstrating how the EU has a direct impact on the money in your pocket, the bin on your doorstep, the police on your street and the food in your shopping basket. As Iain Martin said in the Sunday Telegraph, this is “credit crunch Euroscepticism”.
For too long, the EU debate has been bookish, concerned more with legalese, historic gripes and philosophical mores. Although necessary and effective in the right fight, things have moved on, the landscape has changed and the time has come for sceptics to update their tactics and to become more direct.
Is it any wonder that, with pro and sceptical elements talking more to each other than to the wider populace, our polling reveals that 45% of the public feel that none of the major parties represent their concerns on the matter, while only 29% can find any main party to represent their view?
Over the next few months we will take the hard-hitting tactics used to great effect to expose the quangos, wasteful spending, excessive remuneration and misguided policies of the domestic British state and focus them on the European Union. Allied with a series of stunts and other attention-grabbing techniques, we intend to take the debate out of the talking shop and onto the high street.
Mark Wallace is Campaigns Director for the Taxpayers' Alliance
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Comments
TGF UKIP
January 12th, 2009 11:00pmIf only, if only The Taxpayers Alliance would form themselves into a political party!
George Steiner
January 13th, 2009 12:32amDivorce and start a new life.
Verity
January 13th, 2009 1:30am"Particularly with a recession taking hold, we cannot afford to carry unnecessary burdens, and the EU imposes more than its fair share." NSS. Who pays their "fair share", please? Romania?
"Over the next few months we will take the hard-hitting tactics used to great effect to expose ..." How the hell do you know your "hard-hitting tactics" will be "used to great effect"?
This bunch of bollocks isn't even a dog's breakfast.
"For too long, the EU debate has been bookish, concerned more with legalese, historic gripes and philosophical mores. Although necessary and effective in the right fight, things have moved on, the landscape has changed and the time has come for sceptics to update their tactics and to become more direct."
Bookish? Concerned more with legalese? Yes, because that's what it will take to get us out of this hellhole.
"Historic gripes"? How dare you diminish our wars to maintain our own sovereignty over a thousand years as "historic gripes"?
What a useless, directionless post.
Andy Leeds
January 13th, 2009 7:58amWill all be good ammo for the Tories. And lets hope the Euro starts to fall to bits.
Mark Wallace
January 13th, 2009 10:07amVerity:" How the hell do you know your "hard-hitting tactics" will be "used to great effect"? "
We've got a strong track record of exposing waste, mismanagement and incompetence in Britain, and we intend to use it to expose similar failures in Brussels. As an apparent EU-sceptic, I'd hope you would think that is a good thing.
"Bookish? Concerned more with legalese? Yes, because that's what it will take to get us out of this hellhole."
The point I was making is that to genuinely get a new relationship with the EU based on free trade rather than political integration, you actually need to engage the wider population. That means talking about real life as well as just dealing with treaty technicalities. Detailed legal debates are important at the right time, and there's been excellent work done rightly scrutinising each Treaty for example, but in a democracy one needs to actually involve the wider electorate, who are turned off by the dry technicalities. Thus far the EU has relied on complex lawyer speak and loosely worded technicalities to avoid proper public scrutiny, so we need to drag the reality of their work into the public eye.
""Historic gripes"? How dare you diminish our wars to maintain our own sovereignty over a thousand years as "historic gripes"? "
Again, there has been a huge amount of very good work done over the years, and the high principles are important. My point is that people are rightly more concerned about their financial well being, their services, their tax levels and so on rather than whether Ted Heath lied in 1972, or whether. If you want the public on board, the EU needs to be more than just a philosophical issue, it needs to be one that affects their day to day concerns. It does affect those concerns, and we plan to make clear how.
Polly and Alice's mum
January 13th, 2009 10:33amGood for you Taxpayers Alliance! You are so right about the wider public - their eyes glaze over at the mere mention of the EU. You need to forcefully bring it home to them how much the whole shebang costs each one of them.
Michael Doyle
January 13th, 2009 11:35amMy thoughts from afar: Cameron is a clear odds-on to win. If he wants to have a landslide he should make it clear that the EU needs Britain more than Britain needs the EU. That he'd force the EU to take a realistic and common sense attitude to economic issues. That if they didnt want to comply then Britain would walk away.
Denis Cooper
January 13th, 2009 12:36pmIt wouldn't make sense to say that this approach is completely right, but that approach is completely wrong - except perhaps when it's clear that a certain strategy is going to consume massive resources and is likely to be ineffective or even counter-productive.
A wide range of misconceptions have been deliberately propagated amongst the population, some of them economic, some political and some legal, and they all need to be exposed for the myths that they are.
For example I was shocked recently, when my daughter mentioned that a friend had assured her that although there were a lot of EU rules they were all only advisory, and we were free to decide which to adopt and which to ignore.
When somebody with a university degree is so abysmally ignorant about the basic legal position, clearly there's still a lot of work to be done on that front as well.
David Lindsay
January 13th, 2009 2:18pmThe Tories are the party of the Treaty of Rome, the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, eighteen consecutive annual votes to approve the Common Agricultural Policy (with only the tiniest handful of rebels, towards the very hand), eighteen consecutive annual votes to approve the Common Fisheries Policy (likewise), the withdrawal of the whip from an infinitesimal number of MPs who merely abstained on increased British funding of the EU, the deselection of a Maastricht rebel and of no other MP ever on the European issue, the fake call for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty rather than for its simple rejection by Parliament, and the refusal to promise to campaign for a No vote in the extremely unlikely event of any such referendum.
Even the vague promise to revisit the CFP, an old Major hand like Michael Howard’s nod to Euroscepticism, has been ditched by Cameron, Michael Heseltine’s mini-me. The Tories have not left the European People’s Party, and they never will.
David Bouvier
January 13th, 2009 2:29pmDenis - if your daughters friend was French she was probably right.
teledu
January 13th, 2009 5:15pmMichael Doyle - spot on sir.
Ray
January 13th, 2009 7:04pmThe whole reason why the Eurocrats have couched the debate in 'legalese' and technicalities has been to mask the supranational nature of their ultimate dream: a federal superstate where the old nation states of Europe have been withered away to irrelevance.
I remember a cartoon from the 1960s that showed Harold MacMillan turning up with cricket bat and pads whilst de Gaulle and Adenauer were attired in soccer strips: MacMillan notes innocently "has someone changed the rules?"
The truth is the movers and shakers in the EU will never accept Britain's desire for a looser, free-trading intergovernmental Europe because supranationalism is, and always will be the game they are ultimately playing.
And so for a Cameron government the choice will be to either knuckle under and finally kiss goodbye to a thousand years of national independence; or to rescue our country by pulling out of the EU while there is still time, and before the whole rotten edifice goes the way of the Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union and all the other artificial constructs that have tried to pretend that different people with differing traditions can be pulverised into becoming one big superstate.
Sorry, Dave, the choice is that stark.
Hysteria
January 14th, 2009 3:11pmslightly off topic - but related - here is my post from the Wall re the disenfrachising of overseas electors.......
I promised an update on the postal vote issue and the disenfrachisement of 100% of overseas electors - well I have the answer from the Electoral Commission and guess what is driving this? Yup - European Legislation !!!!
Specifically European Parliamentary Elections Regulations 2004 Para 33 of Section 2.
So yet again the EU is driving what should be something we as a sovereign nation can determine - it makes me SO BLOODY angry !
Willy Humbold
January 14th, 2009 3:22pmDon't despair. Use your fingers and head and vote YES to Free Europe at www.FreeEurope.info
sarahsmith
January 15th, 2009 5:38pmgood luck with your peevish, pityfully backward pennypinching nationalism. couldn't get the country to rally round your attempts at castigating the elderly for spending their winter fuel payments in spain? so have decided to instead just go after just about anyone who would like to continue their ability to enjoy their life in spain and any other part of europe. pack of tight fisted right wingers, your a joke