Lobbyists know that MEPs have important powers to formulate and amend EU legislation, yet we allowed the media to go unchallenged in downplaying the powers of the Parliament and the importance of the election. As party strategists pick over the electoral disaster, fears are starting to circulate about our ability to coax a suspicious public into Euroland. The absence of Labour s core vote is positive proof that we have underestimated this task to date. We must not assume that this ideal is too dense to sell to the people or that the people are too dense to understand. The real problem is a lack of familiarity rather than of complexity.
European structures are, after all, far more straightforward than Britain s creaking patchwork.
We have failed to make Europe familiar to the British people. Along with the US, the British are unique in their unwillingness to engage with other cultures to watch imported world films and TV programmes or to follow current affairs beyond the anglophone universe. The closest our broadcasters have come to fostering empathy with our fellow citizens is Eurotrash . Our media must become part of the solution, not the root of the problem. Surveys have shown that we have the most distrusted press in Europe and even Eurosceptics on the doorstep are irritated by the obvious lies.