This article examines the nature and impact of changing media coverage of European integration in Britain from accession to the European Economic Community in 1973 to the present day. It does so through a consideration of the causes behind the collapse of the ‘permissive consensus’ on European affairs, which since the time of the 1975 referendum has given way to a form of ‘destructive dissent’ across vast swaths of the written and broadcast media, particularly noticeable in the UK tabloids. The collapse in media support for the EU project has been expressed in a number of ways, some of them bordering on the nationalist and/or xenophobic, and opportunities for the expression of such views have merely been increased by the EU's own efforts to deepen integration in the face of widespread popular distrust of both national politicians and supranational constitution‐building. The article alights on the ‘Rupert Murdoch effect’ as a core explanation for this general shift in attitudes, as market leader on Euroscepticism expressed in agenda‐setting outlets such as the Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times. The newspaper mogul's commercial interests in promoting deregulated media markets have kept him closely watchful of European affairs in Britain, and he has proved particularly willing to back leaders and parties he believes will be most conducive to the furtherance of these interests. The article suggests that Murdoch led the way in creating a climate of fear around European matters that severely tested the leadership qualities of even notionally pro‐European prime ministers on this vexed question in British politics. Newspapers might not be able to tell people what to think, but they can affect what they think about, and News International, with willing support from ideological Eurosceptics across the top‐selling UK tabloid and broadsheets, has proved effective at keeping the British public in a permanent state of ‘war’ with the EU since the 1980s.
The article investigates how British European policy thinking has been informed by what it identifies as an 'outsider' tradition of thinking about 'Europe' in British foreign policy dating from imperial times to the presen. The article begins by delineating five phases in the evolution of the outsider tradition through a survey of the relevant historiography back to 1815. The article then examines how prime ministers from Margaret Thatcher to David Cameron have looked to various inflections of the outsider tradition to inform their European discourses. The focus in the speech data sections is on British identity, history and the realist appreciation of international politics that informed the leaders' suggestions for EEC/EU reform. The central argument is that historically informed narratives such as those making up the outsider tradition do not determine opinion-formers' outlooks, but that they can be deeply impervious to rapid change.
Of the many dilemmas faced by Theresa May in negotiating Britain's withdrawal from the EU, finding a workable narrative to accompany Brexit proved one of the most intractable. She and her top government ministers alighted on the idea of "Global Britain", unpacked in this article using qualitative discourse analysis. It begins by positioning the contribution in the literatures on constructivist approaches to British foreign policy. Next, it explains the method used to select the relevant sources, develop the codebook and interpret the data. The third section outlines the policy architecture intended to make GlobalBritain™ practical reality. The final section unpacks the accompanying "vision" behind GlobalBritain™, which is framed as the story of Britain escaping a damaging period of confinement inside the EU "prison". The central argument is that GlobalBritain™ puts a marked Eurosceptic twist on a long-standing UK grand strategy aimed at remaining at the top table of global affairs using a pragmatic approach to international relationships. Always a troublesome arena for the conduct of its external relations, Brexit shows Britain continuing its half-in, half-out approach to European integration. The conclusion critically reflects on the research we can now conduct to discover more about this foreign policy narrative in-the-making.Like the politicians, scholars are still puzzled by the "why" and "how" of Brexit. This article contributes to the research on the "how" of Brexit by exploring the Conservative government's foreign policy vision for Britain's role in the world outside the EU. It first explains the contributions the research makes to constructivist-interpretivist foreign policy analysis. Next, it explains the method used to investigate the discursive substance of the GlobalBritain™ narrative: spatiality, temporality, ethicality and intertextuality. The third 3 section outlines the proposed policy architecture of GlobalBritain™. The final section reports the findings on the narrative side, showing how the discourse approach yielded comprehensive insights into this vision-in-the-making, bolstered by the politicians' colourful use of metaphor. The central argument is that GlobalBritain™ puts a Conservative Eurosceptic twist on long-standing British foreign policy traditions, making for a negative, defensive narrative that will likely limit its resonance to key stakeholders domestically and internationally. The conclusions reflect on the utility of using this method to connect discourse analysts and foreign policy analysts and, thereby, its potential to impact on the policy community by mainstreaming discourse analysis as a toolkit for conducting foreign policy evaluation.
This article advances the interpretivist perspective on British foreign policy by studying Tony Blair's difficult encounter with the Eurosceptic tradition in Britain, popularized by Margaret Thatcher from the late 1980s. Using discourse data taken from key foreign policy speeches by the two leaders across their periods in office, the article investigates the problems Blair and his New Labour team faced when trying to justify and legitimize Britain's more constructive approach to the European Union from 1997. The article argues that Blair failed to modernize public attitudes and build support behind a Europeanist consensus in Britain because, contrary to the reputations they have built up over the years, the two leaders’ webs of belief about the British in Europe were remarkably similar. Blair reworked rather than undermined core themes within the British Eurosceptic tradition.
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