#Brexit: Không thích, sợ hãi và bản năng gan dạ - tại sao chủ nghĩa Âu châu của người Anh là duy nhất

Nick Powell

So it has come to this. On Thursday night, the British Prime Minister will try to secure a deal that he can recommend to the British people in a referendum on whether to stay in the European Union.

David Cameron needs approval from the leaders of the other member states; countries which many British people still mentally divide into the ones that Britain invaded during the Second World War and the ones that wish they had been invaded by Britain during World War II.

Euroscepticism is no longer a uniquely British phenomenon but Britain has a unique kind of Euroscepticism. Much of the widespread sense of disillusionment and disappointment with the European project in other countries is to do with the tensions of the Schengen area and of the Euro zone. Nowadays, no British politician would dare suggest joining either Schengen or the Euro.

It is by no means clear that Cameron has succeeded in identifying issues that crystallize British concerns about EU membership. First, he had to find issues on which he could reasonably hope to secure concessions in Brussels. That was difficult enough, but it is even harder to articulate what is often an inarticulate British dislike, even dread, of the European project itself.

Blame the British Empire, blame the world wars or simply blame the fact that Britain is more or less an island. The British may yet decide that their Prime Minister has done a good job or just made the best of a bad job and vote to stay in. But many who vote to leave won’t be passing a verdict on the Cameron deal. They will be backing a gut feeling that Britain simply does not belong in the European Union.

No doubt those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU will seek to produce hard facts and convincing statistics. In much the same way campaigners for Scotland to leave the United Kingdom in the 2014 independence referendum prepared answers about what an independent Scotland would look like.

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Some of those answers were less convincing than others, but that hardly mattered. The campaign for Scottish independence nearly won because it had the greater emotional appeal. Many Scots thought of Scotland as a proud nation in its own right, and the United Kingdom as a mere practical arrangement of doubtful long term value.

Much of the support for Britain leaving the UK is based a similar view of the relationship with the EU. Of course, when Britain held a referendum on its membership of the then EEC in 1975, 67% of voters supported staying in. But it’s significant that back then the Communist Morning Star was the only national daily newspaper to call for a vote to leave.

Now the majority of British national newspapers are Eurosceptic. It’s tempting to argue that newspaper proprietors living outside the UK (and EU) in the USA or in tax havens are responsible. But that’s only half true and in any case it’s not so long ago that nearly all of them suspended their pro-Conservative party instincts and told their readers to vote for Tony Blair’s Labour party. Newspapers tend to tell their readers what they want to hear, magnifying and reinforcing prejudices in the process.

None of which is to say that Britain will necessarily vote to leave the EU. The hard core opponents of British membership could well be the biggest single bloc of voters. They are also the ones most certain to cast their ballots, but they are not enough on their own. However, before the pro-EU campaign can win, it must appeal to the instincts, even the prejudices, of the British people.

The latest opinion poll gives an 8% lead for staying in but that is less than half the 18% lead in January. In the next few months, the campaigners to remain in the European Union need to somehow manage to do what comes more naturally to their opponents. Merge the factual arguments with the emotional ones into a message, which even if it is not always totally coherent is convincing enough to win the day.

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