The roots of Euroscepticism

A COMMON (sometimes exasperated) question from abroad is: why is Britain having a referendum on its EU membership? The simple answer is that David Cameron promised one in the Conservative Party manifesto for last May’s election. But the deeper one is to be found in the rise and rise of British Euroscepticism.

The origins of today’s EU lie in the ashes of post-war Europe. Reconciliation between France and Germany, urged by Winston Churchill in 1946, led to the creation of the six-member European Coal and Steel Community in 1951 and the European Economic Community in 1957. But a wary Britain, keen to preserve links with the Commonwealth and America, stood aside from both. Only in the 1960s did the British, impressed by the continent’s stronger economy, try to join, eventually doing so in 1973.

What this history shows is that Britain has an essentially transactional relationship with the club. Membership has been evaluated in terms of costs and benefits, not as an emotional commitment. Moreover, as a latecomer, Britain has often found the EU’s organisation and policies uncongenial. This was reflected in Margaret Thatcher’s battles in the 1980s to cut the outsized British budget contribution.

Over the years the political base of British Euroscepticism has moved from left to right. In the early years Labour was the more suspicious party. In 1962 its leader, Hugh Gaitskell, warned that joining the common market would end 1,000 years of history. In 1975 Harold Wilson dealt with Labour splits over Europe by staging a renegotiation and putting the result to a referendum—a tactic remarkably similar to Mr Cameron’s today. In the early 1980s, Labour was once again set on withdrawal.

The pivotal moment came in 1988, when the European Commission’s president, Jacques Delors, promised the Trades Union Congress that Europe’s single market would be buttressed by tougher labour and social regulations. This reinforced Thatcher’s growing Euroscepticism, and led directly to her Bruges speech attacking excessive EU interference in the same year. Her political downfall two years later was triggered by her denunciation of Mr Delors’s plans for closer EU integration and a single currency. This marked the point when the Tories replaced Labour as the party of Euroscepticism.

Mr Cameron not only inherited this as party leader in 2005 but also, as prime minister after 2010, had to deal with a growing threat from the even more Eurosceptic UK Independence Party (UKIP). His response, in his Bloomberg speech in January 2013, was, like Wilson’s 40 years earlier, to promise a renegotiation and referendum.

Yet today’s shrill debate over Brexit reflects mainly internal Tory party politics. Most voters are less excited. Opinion polls suggest that they see Europe as a relatively unimportant issue. Moreover, in most elections since Britain joined the club in 1973, voters have delivered majorities to the more pro-EU of the two main parties.

Even so, the roots of British Euroscepticism are deep. Matthew Goodwin of the University of Kent, who has studied the phenomenon and written a history of UKIP, reckons they are cultural as much as political. Britain, he says, forged its identity against perceived threats from across the Channel. He adds that, although the young and better educated tend to be less Eurosceptic, the popular notion that it is only older working-class voters who favour Brexit is not correct.

Nor is it right to argue that British-style Euroscepticism is oozing all over the continent. Certainly there is growing disillusion with the EU, especially over migration and the euro’s woes. This has fostered a form of soft Euroscepticism (see chart). Unlike in Britain, it is young people who are most susceptible, because they suffer the most from high unemployment. Yet there is no serious debate anywhere but Britain about leaving the EU. Only if a post-Brexit Britain were a big success might that change—which is one reason why the EU will not want to help bring that about.