EU Referendum: running out of enthusiasm

29/09/2015

It is nice to see that the proxy opposition is having its own crises, with an admission from the dark side, via the BBC that things are not quite as they would prefer.

This comes from executive director of the unfortunately named In Campaign, one Will Straw, son of Jack, who believes his opponents' supporters are more enthusiastic than those on his side of the argument. There is, he says, an "enthusiasm gap" in the EU debate, and he is concerned that those committed to the UK leaving the EU are more likely to vote in the forthcoming referendum.

The venue for this startling revelation was a fringe event at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton organises by Open Europe, where Mr Straw - who stood and lost as a Labour candidate at the general election - said it would be a "huge challenge" to persuade the country to vote to stay in the EU.

Telling us nothing we did not already know, though, he suggested that as roughly a third of the electorate were committed to the UK staying in the EU, a third wanted the UK to leave and a third were undecided.

To turn the tide, Lady Royall, the former Labour leader in the House of Lords, said those making the case for the EU had to do so "as passionately and simply" as those advocating withdrawal.

Blair McDougall, the Labour activist who ran the "no" campaign in the Scottish independence referendum, argued that the very fact that an EU referendum was happening proved that on one level the pro-EU arguments that had been made up to now "hadn't worked". He added that "populists and nationalists are very hard to beat. They are like baddies in a horror film. They keep coming back. For them it is about emotion and faith".

Labour MEP Jude Kirton Darling then said "the minute we start talking about institutions we lose the argument," and reflected that politicians shouldn't be too prominent in the campaign. "We're not trusted. Who would trust us?' she asked.

It was left to Northeast Labour MEP Paul Brannen then to pitch in with the view that: "We have to find real stories about benefits of staying in the EU and deliver them with passion if want to win the referendum".

From that, more than anything, we can draw a little comfort. If after more than 40 years the Europhiles feel they need to find "real stories about benefits of staying in the EU", then they are really in trouble. If the benefits were so evident, then they surely would already have a stack of stories to tell.

We can, however, draw even more comfort from the evidence that the Europhile debate seems as inane and unconnected as our own, notwithstanding that their arguments are also as irrelevant. When the time comes, our real opposition – Mr Cameron - won't be making a case for the EU. He will be agreeing how awful it is, thence to pave the way for his proposals to make things better.

That at least saves us having to engage with these people. There is nothing quite as tedious as the low drone of a conviction Europhile such as Richard Corbett, repeating his same tired and mendacious mantras, such as Norway having to accept single market rules "with no say".

One wonders, at times, whether the opposition is trying to bore us into submission, but then use of the term "enthusiasm gap" hits home. The Europhiles really have run out of enthusiasm, lacking anything interesting to say about the object of their affection.

Straw actually worries that the TV debates and national conversation will be directed towards David Cameron and George Osborne, potentially putting people off. "There is a risk", he says, "that because it will start to be seen as David Cameron and George Osborne's referendum, people will say 'I can't stand David Cameron and George Osborne, I'm going to vote against it because it’s their referendum'".

This really should make our life quite easy. If we can drum up enough imagination to produce a coherent vision of a future outside the EU, we should be home and dry. But that pre-supposes we can find more than half-a-dozen eurosceptics prepared to agree on any one issue.

There, possibly, is the ultimate irony. Given the lack-lustre performance of the Europhiles, who appear to be struggling to find anything positive to say about their creed, it is very easy to believe that the biggest handicap we face is our own side.