The British public is persuaded that Britain counts for little or nothing in Europe. We are, apparently, forever dictated to and bossed about. Europe is a clique of unelected bureaucrats and we’re the despised outsiders. It is a Franco-German party and we are the unpopular, fat kid who never gets invited.
I use that loaded word – fat – advisedly. It sounds silly in this context but it is no laughing matter, I can assure you.
Like the average woman who is told by every advert, every magazine cover and every lifestyle programme that she needs to lose 20lb, and who then spends more time worrying about the thigh gap than the pay gap, the average British voter is fed a constant diet of misinformation and despondency about our relationship with the European Union, one designed to make us think less of ourselves and ask less of our leaders.
When over 60 per cent of the public tell us in poll after poll – and here is the latest – that Britain has no influence they are not reflecting objective factors, concrete data or stats but the noxious drip-drip-drip of the fear-mongering Europhobes whispering in their ear every single day, from every media platform: Europe hates us and is out to get us.
And while we fret about bent bananas we fail to keep tabs on what the government is negotiating on our behalf, and hold it to account when it fails or when it is not ambitious enough. Worse, busy as we are thinking we count for nothing, we sleepwalk towards global irrelevance, which is a real place and lies at the exact geographical coordinates of Brexit.
Our organisation, as the name implies, believes the question of influence is crucial to the entire Europe debate. Some of us love Europe and the values it represents – as simple as that. The vast majority of us recognise that Europe is the best and primary forum for Great Britain to keep projecting greatness in the world – be it to fight for human rights and against climate change or to secure job-creating trade deals on the fairest possible terms.
The reality is that the United Kingdom, through its ministers and its members of the European parliament, does in fact hold a considerable amount of influence in Europe.
I am not just referring to the general direction of travel of the European project – from the single market to enlargement and now economic reform.
Today we are launching our second annual British Influence Scorecard, a sector-by-sector audit of how successful Britain’s coalition government has been in its stated policy objectives at EU level, grading each policy area amber, green or red and comparing each with the score we allocated in 2013.
We are making no value judgement on the policies themselves, simply pointing at where the government has succeeded – mostly in secret, as if ashamed of it – in its own terms.
The panel, drawn from the three mainstream political parties, from business, academia, journalism and thinktanks used the same policy divisions as used in the UK government’s balance of competences exercise. It found overwhelmingly more greens than reds (23 vs 4) and a few pesky ambers (17) which could turn either way in the year to come.
And this is the key: whether the UK’s stated policy goal is the expansion of the single market to digital services, or fighting terrorism more effectively, it is only when engaging with our allies, negotiating in the council of ministers, voting in the European parliament that gets the job done.
Policies do not put themselves on the agenda. Threats and red lines do not convert into policies.
No funny United Kingdom Independence party YouTube video mocking a foreign statesman’s surname has ever got us an inch closer to a better piece of regulation or more money for our regions. We have to continue to be in it to win it.
Our bum does not look big in this – our influence might just about be.
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Paola Buonadonna is media director for British Influence, which tweets @BritInfluence. She tweets @Peebi
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Well labour may like Brussels and the EU, as Labour like’s big govt and the EU loves big govt. Problem is many people in the UK value their liberty and dislike big over bearing govt. The EU pours out never ending red tape and wastes truckloads of money of ‘cohesion cash’ on new motorways with no traffic that go no where, empty airports in the middle of Spain with no airline passengers. These are the regional accomplishments of the EU wasting our tax money.
As for the much awaited Single Digital Market, we are all still waiting? and we will all be old and grey or in our graves before the bickering European copyright lawyers all agree on anything. The UK stands for free trade and personal freedom, the EU stands for complex French style red tape, high taxes, and big controlling govt. No thanks, we do not want to be controlled by unelected eurocrats in Brussels.