Less than a year has passed since Better Together accomplished its mission to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom. Yet, the three parties that worked on the project have largely disowned it. Electoral success has rarely been orphaned so quickly. There are defeats with prouder parents. When pro-Europeans talk about learning the lessons of Scotland, they mean the outcome should be the same — a majority against separation — but the strategy, organisation and style should be completely different. “Everyone who was involved in Better Together seems to be suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress,” says one strategist working on the fledgling European Union (EU) ‘yes’ campaign.
Even the wording of the European question is drafted with a view to exorcising Scottish ghosts. Unionists were accused of running a negative campaign, to which they replied that negativity is hard to avoid when the banner says “no”. When Britain is asked about EU membership, the answer that rejects drastic change — the risk-aversion ticket — will this time enjoy the smiley inflections of “yes”. Affirmative branding is to be a leavening agent in an otherwise stodgy message of caution. The keenest pro-Europeans would like a campaign imbued with ideals of continental solidarity. Part of the task, as they see it, is rehabilitation of the “European idea” — the spirit of anti-nationalism; solving centuries of bloody conflict with economic interdependence. That is the moral case for integration, and it forms part of a civic European consciousness in some other member states. Not in the UK.
Britain is wary of continental entanglement and no campaign strategy will change that in time for the referendum. There are many reasons why the Euro-faith has few proselytes in Britain. Decades of parochial, anti-Brussels myth-mongering in the press is part of it. A history syllabus that dwells on the island story of stand-alone heroism is another. But there is a deeper cultural immunity to continental enthusiasms: A wary scepticism of grandiose political abstractions of any kind that is, at worst, cussed anti-intellectualism and, at best, inoculation against delusions of utopia. Whatever the cause, Britain is wary of continental entanglement and even the best campaign strategy in the world will not change that instinct in time for the referendum. Both camps are now working towards a presumed polling date around early September next year. Prime Minister David Cameron, never lacking in self-belief, is sure his membership renegotiation will yield some ingenious formula that allows the yes campaign to advertise itself as the win-win proposition: Economic security as a player in the single market but with sovereignty restored to satisfy the sceptics.
Other pro-Europeans are less confident. Even supporters of the prime minister’s position worry that the deal will be caricatured by the no camp as Cameron’s “Munich moment” — a re-enactment of Chamberlain declaring “peace for our time” from a windswept airfield in 1938. Strategists for the ‘yes’ team still accept that Cameron’s voice will be central to their campaign, not because they expect his offer to be irresistible, but because swing voters will never suspect him of misty-eyed Europhilia.
Early polling indicates a rough three-way split in the electorate, with a third likely to support EU membership come what may, a third hostile under any circumstances and a variable contingent in the middle that currently leans towards staying in but without enthusiasm. The yes camp identifies a further bifurcation in its support. There is a core made up of committed liberal internationalists: Cosmopolitan polyglots; soft-left voters who like Europe because the Tory right and United Kingdom Independence Party hate it — citizens of the Eurostar “carte blanche” business lounge.
Then there is the “head-over-heart” crowd: Less financially secure, instinctively suspicious of Brussels, tolerant of ethnic diversity, but not of an open-door immigration policy, grudging and pragmatic in acceptance of EU membership on the grounds that clocks cannot be turned back and job-creating noses should not be cut off to spite foreign faces. It is those “head-over-hearters” who will decide the referendum. They are unsusceptible to persuasion by politicians whose pro-Europeanism reeks of a frequent-flier global elite. They respond badly to the pious, schoolmasterly tone of the Nick Cleggs and Peter Mandelsons, who admonish Euroscepticism as a tiresome mental fidget of the politically immature. At the best of times that tone is counter-productive. It is deadly in a climate where voters need little incentive to lash out against “Westminster”.
The pro-EU campaign cannot seriously compete for an insurgent anti-establishment vote when the product it sells is a Brussels compromise endorsed by the prime minister. It cannot win on pan-European idealism because there is no majority in Britain for that sort of thing. Nor should it rely entirely on fear of the unknown as a brake on visceral Europhobia. Warnings of economic calamity buttressed the anti-separation argument in Scotland, but in that case there was a shy but solid foundation of cultural attachment to the union. There is no such emotional support for the EU.
One trait of pro-European voters that yes campaign strategists identify is difficulty articulating the reasons for their view. Those who want out of Europe can easily put their grievance into words: Brussels writes Britain’s laws; Britain has lost control of its border controls; Britain’s taxes pay their benefits. There is no such clarity on the other side and much less passion. Hardly anyone likes the EU with as much force as the haters hate it with. This asymmetry of engagement creates big risks for the yes campaign. It suggests their support is soft, and even if it is not vulnerable to persuasion by the sceptics it is liable to stay at home without compelling reasons to turn out. Raw economic fear will inevitably play a part in voter mobilisation, but the argument cannot start there.
The pro-Europeans need to lay a foundation of principled optimism about Britain’s future. They need to give their potential supporters pub-ready arguments for EU membership: Defensive rhetorical armour against the more emotive claims of the sceptics. Failure to anticipate the sheer social awkwardness of pragmatic unionists when confronted with garrulous separatists was one of Better Together’s strategic errors. Britain will not fall in love with the EU at any point in the next 12 months. The task for the pro-European campaign is to give voters confidence that membership is a good idea anyway, emboldening the head before the heart turns any harder.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
