MEDIA STUDIES
Why the government is going bananas over the Eurosceptic press
STEPHEN GLOVER
magine Tony Blair in Moscow earlier this week. He is swept around in limousines, flattered by Vladimir Putin, and generally treated as though he were leader of a very important country. And then his press secretary, Alastair Campbell, is faxed copies of the morning's front pages from London. 'Is Blair playing with fire?' asks the Daily Mail. 'EU're in the army now,' puns the Sun. Actually, they don't seem to be the most provocative headlines imagin- able, but they had an explosive effect when the much-feted Mr Blair read them on Tuesday morning. Interviewed by Andrew Marr on Radio Four's Today programme, the Prime Minister laid into the 'absolute and utter madness' of what he now calls `the anti-European press'. He appears to have been genuinely angry. When the short interview was finished, Mr Marr informed listeners that in a separate conversation Mr Blair had described 'the anti-European press' as 'fundamentally dishonest'.
This ferocious attack was preceded last week by one from Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary. In an unusual attempt at humour, Mr Cook accused some newspa- pers of having a vision of Europe in which `jackbooted Europeans' roam the streets of Britain arresting anyone eating bananas or drinking pints of beer. His assault, which displeased the less Europhile Gordon Brown, was itself preceded by two speeches from Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader and now vice-president of the Euro- pean Commission, who blamed the press for pumping out Eurosceptic 'bilge'. Mr Kinnock lets fly in similar vein in an inter- view in this issue of The Spectator, Peter Mandelson, the Northern Ireland Secre- tary, has also recently heaped scorn on the Eurosceptic press, while Keith Vaz, Mr Cook's deputy, has provided useful cover- ing fire, particularly against the Sun.
There is a co-ordinated attempt by some members of the government to portray the Eurosceptic press as being several apples short of a picnic, as well as inherently men- dacious. To some degree the outrage is honestly felt, as I have suggested it was in the case of Mr Blair. Mr Kinnock loathes the tabloids, largely for doing him down when he was Labour leader. Mr Cook's anger is genuine, though it may be partly whipped up by a political calculation. In his predicament — a senior minister likely to be sacked after the next election — he might as well distinguish himself by taking on some formidable opponents and show- ing off his long-forgotten skills in guerrilla warfare to the Prime Minister.
But why now? Why the co-ordinated attack? The answer lies in a four-letter word: Nice. The government knows that it will have to concede more territory than it would like at next month's European summit on the Cote d'Azur. At the end of last week Mr Cook wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph in which he argued that the extension of majority voting in some instances would actually promote Britain's national self-inter- est. In fact, the government would much rather keep its veto in as many areas as possi- ble, but realises that the European Commis- sion and most member states want 'qualified majority voting' to be made the rule in Nice. There will be some sort of compromise, but that will be interpreted by 'the anti-Euro- pean press' as a sell-out. So the government is pre-emptively debunking its critics in the hope that their howls of outrage will be dis- counted by the British people.
It will not succeed. The government, or at any rate its Europhile wing, is in the grip of a fallacy. It really believes that the Daily Mail, the Sun, the Sunday Times, and the Daily and Sunday Telegraph regularly manipulate their readers, to whom they feed a diet of lies and scare stories. If only these readers could be told the truth, and their newspapers were dis- credited, they would see the light. The fallacy depends on an exaggerated view of the power of the press, which has been a hall- mark of New Labour since its inception. It does not seem to occur to the Blairites that the British people are increasingly Euroscep- tic principally because of objective evidence — the failure of the euro, the undeniable moves towards further integration — rather than as a result of media manipulation.
The truth, as every proper journalist knows, but very few politicians, is that news- papers don't like being too far ahead of their readers. If the Eurosceptic press is reaching new heights of vituperation, it is because it senses rightly that the British people are more disillusioned with the European Union than they have ever been before. I don't dis- pute that some newspapers stoke up the flames, but they can't singlehandedly start a fire. You could even argue that the elec- torate is more Eurosceptic than the press: recent polls show that 70 per cent of respon- dents are against the euro, while the sales of `the anti-European press' amount to a signifi- cantly smaller proportion of overall newspa- per circulation. There are lessons here that the Blairites can scarcely afford to confront. The press is less powerful than New Labour thinks, and the British people are more Eurosceptical than it would like.
Last week I wrote about Piers Morgan, editor of the Mirror, whose controversial share dealings Department of Trade inves- tigators are slowly unpicking. It will take many months, and we must be patient. Mr Morgan may be forgiven for thinking he is on Fleet Street's equivalent of Death Row.
What a good thing that the independence of DTI inspectors should be as legendary as the integrity of Stephen Byers, the secretary of state. This is something for which we must all be grateful. For the fact is that Piers Morgan is a close friend of the gov- ernment, and frequently talks on the tele- phone to Alastair Campbell. Mr Campbell has been known to complain that Mr Mor- gan does not take politics as seriously as he might, but there is no paper more doggedly loyal than the Mirror.
Last Monday it excelled itself. The fears of Mirror readers who had heard about Cabinet rifts on Europe were allayed in the most sympathetic manner. The government was compared to a 'family agreeing to go out for the day, and where to go, but argu- ing about whether to go by bus or train'. The paper assured us that 'the simple truth is that there is no split in the government over our entry to the euro. All ministers believe we should go in when the time is right and all of them agree the time is not right now.' Thank God for that.
And thank God, too, for the British sys- tem which ensures that no government can protect its friends. We can sleep easy in the knowledge that if Mr Morgan has a case to answer, he will have to answer it.
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