Talk:Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom

Proposal
I would like to propose that a large part of the section Euroscepticism be transferred to this article (they are already close copies of each other), and leave a summary for the UK in the Euroscepticism article, including the already existing -link.

212.102.225.147 16:02, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * How about just deleting the Euroscepticism in the UK section and keeping the general Eurosceptic section as it is an international phenomenon? - user winston1984


 * Sure, also a good solution. Currently the history section is missing in the Euroscepticism article. - 212.102.225.147 08:10, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Northern Ireland
I have transferred the following from the article. AFAIK Sinn Fein (the largest Nationalist party) is fiercely eurosceptic. I have no idea about the SDLP. All the unionist parties are eurosceptic, so the following para seems very wide of the mark and non-NPOV Sceptic 12:38, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

It is quite a different story in Northern Ireland, where many people (mainly Nationalists) are pro-Europe, due to the same attitude existing in the Republic of Ireland. Many people here would be happy to adopt the Euro and the metric system, due to the main factor as being so close to an area that does.


 * I haven't been able to find any statement on the EU on Sinn Féin's website, and we should also keep in mind that not always do the stances of parties reflect the stances of the people who vote for them (for instance, not all Sinn Féin and SDLP voters want reunification, as polls attest)... &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 11:01, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi sorry I don't know how to edit, this is my first time, so here goes.

"After decades of anti-racist campaigns, it became acceptable again to be against foreigners."

Does this seem POV to anyone else?

"Agitated European politicians regarded the support of Dutch politicians for the anti-European sentiments of their population as an uncooperative Calvinist attitude. Most Dutch people support the European Union, but are against too much power for the European institutions."

Now this has got to be POV. I haven't made any edits to the main article, I want to see what other people think, but there is not one citation in this entire article, and that Calvinist assertion seems to be extremely value laden.

autocratus

oops sorry wrong page

The term Euroscepticism
There's a lot of laziness witht the term. Indeed there no examination it seems on the origin and developpment of the term.

Whilst I appreciate the terms "Euroscepticism" has become an big-tent term, to include a wide variety of views, it clasically had a much more precise meaning that really should be explored in the article. It originally referred to those who believed in the EU, but were not keen on much or any further European integration, really from around the time of Maastricht, early 1990s). It specifically referred to strand within the Conservative Party.

Euroscepticism did not originally include those who were fundamently opposed to the European project, only those who didn't like the Maastrich Treaty (Treaty on European Union). By this definition, politicans (of the right such as Enoch Powell or the left Tony Benn) would not be considered "Eurosceptic", (scepticism implies some, albeit conditional support for a concept.) UKIP would not be considered Eurosceptic either by this definition. Perhaps the better term for this category of people would be "Anti-European", or perhaps better "Anti European Integration". Classical Euroscepticism is really an ideology of the Thatcherite right. Remember many Thatcherites, (including Thatcher herself) supported Britain's membership of the EC, voted yes in the 1975 referendum and even supported the Single European Act, (which moved more areas of competency to a European Level from the member state more than any other later Treaty). They didn't just support it, but supported it enthusiasticly. However they would see the Single Market as the completion of the European project, and would see not need for the extra elements introduced by Maastricht, e.g. a single currency or a common foreign policy. Many of the anti-Europeans on the left and right of course would have opposed the pre-Masstricht developments also, that is a position quite distinct from a "thus far and no further" view of EU integration.

There has been an intermingling of Euroscpeticism now with Anti-Europeanism. (For example the conservative debate about renegotiating the treaties- was that just code for withdrawal?) And the term is now applied to the those on the left as well as right.
 * Good points. But who are you?--Shtove 00:17, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

the British press
The section on this has no citations, and the only link is to the EC counter-propaganda webpage. The phenomenon is so widespread I'd have thought there would be many studies/surveys that establish it as fact, and point out the countless examples of anti-europe propaganda in the daily press. Anyone got useful links?--Shtove 20:00, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Nothing on the "metric martyrs"... AnonMoos 18:52, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
 * There are hectares of it in the press.--Shtove 00:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Something should be included on the British Press, and its role in promoting Eurosceptic attitudes. Its is well known that many of the owners, some of them not even British, hold negitive attidues towards the EU. 143.167.200.203 (talk) 13:47, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Article intro
The introduction of the article says that Euroscepticism in Britain "has not reduced significantly following UK membership of the Union". Is this the best way of putting it? Arguably two-thirds of Britons were in favour of membership of the Union at the time of the referendum, yet now the figure about one-quarter according to many polls. This rather than Eurosceptism "not reducing", argubly it has significantly increased. The sentence in the introduction suggests that it has stayed steady. TomPhil 14:56, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
 * It's a very badly written sentence, but it actually says that the debate has not reduced rather than the level of euroscepticism. Maybe we can come up with something more encyclopaedic? Sceptic 15:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

EEC vs European Communities
This article keeps on talking about the UK as joining the EEC in 1973. Yes they did, but they also joined the ECSC and the EAEC at the same time. Really, what they joined was the three European Communities. (They could not just join one or two, they had to join all three or none - especially since the Merger Treaty of 1967). So to say the UK joined the European Communities is more accurate, and of course incorporates the fact that they joined the EEC. I will so change this article. --SJK (talk) 22:05, 2 November 2009 (UTC)


 * European Community (singular) was the usual term in spite of your point, so editors have to use it. I have changed most it back to this convention. Philip Cross (talk) 10:37, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I call NPOV
The sources on this article are pretty lame... "euromyth"?! I mean, really... can't we have some scholarly citations?! Where's the section discussing the historical polling on EU-sentiment? The whole article has the whiff of a Europhilic hand.

Slap some more tags on it until the quality significantly improves.

User: MacDaddy —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.67.152 (talk) 01:41, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree that we need more scholarly/book sources etc., and I agree that we need more discussion of actual sentiment, as documented by the results of polls (done by qualified people, of course). The same applies to the parent article, Euroscepticism. I don't see the point about the "Euromyth" source. The paragraph discusses claimes by the British press, and cited counterclaims by the EC (with "Euromyths" in inverted commas and referring to the source, that uses the word. If "Euromyths" are discussed here, we obviously have to put both sides, and we should probably mention that the EC calls them "Euromyths", even if we call them something else. I don't see a "Europhilic hand". In fact the section on arguments for withdrawal does not clearly indicate indirect speech and Wikipedia appears to be adducing facts to support the arguments, which is in breach of policy, in my opinion.--Boson (talk) 08:43, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

"Arguments for British withdrawal range from the rising direct costs of membership, the impact that the EU regulatory burden has on UK business (including the 80% engaged in purely domestic exchange and the 10% exporting to non-EU markets) to the corrosive effects on democracy within all EU member-states including Britain.Q

Related to the NPOV above : the 'Arguments for' section is unsourced and relies heavily on emotive language. Not saying we should remove the section, but put in an arguments against and bulk both up with evidence --86.174.169.98 (talk) 09:46, 21 May 2011 (UTC)


 * We do, of course, need to remember that this is an article about Euroscepticism, not about the advantages and/or disadvantages of the European Union. So we should not, as currently, talk about the disadvantages (or advantages) of the EU but rather about the claims made by Eurosceptics, including Eurosceptic positions of sections of the press (or its owners) and the rebuttal of such claims by others, including the European Commission. Euroscepticism is also not just about withdrawal, so this is given undue weight. As mentioned above, we should also discuss attitudes toward the EU and the extent to which this is classified (on the basis of reliable sources) as Eurosceptic or otherwise. Basically, the article needs rewriting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Boson (talk • contribs) 11:43, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Quality press vs. tabloids
Before we get into an ugly revert war, I suggest discussing the "quality press vs. tabloids" issue here.

This section is...


 * Relevant: the distinction between QP and tabloids is very important, because it means a Daily Telegraph article that portrays the EU in a negative light is probably true, but a Daily Express article that does the same thing is probably made up;
 * Real: I did not pluck this distinction out of thin air, it is very well-known in British journalistic and academic circles;
 * Referenced: each and every claim made in this section is duly referenced with reputable sources, including a peer-reviewed journal and the BBC; and
 * Neutral: the term "quality press" includes both pro-EU (Guardian...) and anti-EU (Daily Telegraph, The Times...) media, so accusations of bias are simply laughable.--Leptictidium (mt) 14:13, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

UK is not one homogeneous entity
Anyone reading this article would think attitudes to the EU were uniform across the whole UK. Opinion polling shows this not to be the case, of course, with Scotland being broadly pro-EU - hence why membership of the EU is a big factor in the Scottish independence debate. With the exception of the briefest of references to the SNP, there is no attempt to even acknowledge that there are differing attitudes to the EU in the various nations of the UK (or between Scotland and the rest of the UK at any rate - I'm no expert on the attitudes in Wales and Northern Ireland). At the very least, the section mentioning anti-EU parties should highlight UKIP's contrasting fortunes north and south of the border - they've never even retained a deposit in Scotland, never mind coming close to getting someone elected. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.103.161.218 (talk) 23:49, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Recent Changes
Criticism sections are always bad, I integrated part of them in the main text. Serten (talk) 13:29, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Suez Crisis
The date normally given for the Suez Crisis is 1956 (during Eden's premiership). Getting the date wrong by two years (and thus inadvertently placing it in Churchill's second term as PM) doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the article. Getting things like that right isn't hard. Norvo (talk) 15:04, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Arguably, the actual topic here is the crisis in British–American relations (i.e. the "anti-British" American stance from 1954 onward), culminating in the Suez Crisis. --Boson (talk) 21:17, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I appreciate a Boson now and then, but thats been my myonic fault. I had used some parts of my Eurafrique article for that section, and there Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Algerian war (in the same year 1954) and the Suez crisis have been mixed up, corrected ion both cases, kudos to Norvo I am German and 1954 sounds just great in my ears ;) Serten II (talk) 21:39, 12 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Many thanks! Herzlichen Dank! I've done some further tidying up (mainly spelling and style) in that paragraph. Norvo (talk) 04:21, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Keine Ursache ! Youre welcome!. As well Boson, if you have more about the prestage of the UK-USA relations, feel free to insert that. As said, it would be of use as well elsewhere. Serten II (talk) 13:07, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Uncited, possibly WP:POV sentence
"Churchill's landmark refusal to join the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951 and his general sceptical feelings toward a British inside role in European integration's shaped the general British ambivalence towards all things Europe."

I've added  and   tags to this sentence. Doesn't seem very neutral IMO, feel free to revert my edits if you disagree. – Zumoarirodoka (talk) 19:08, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Support for Withdrawal Section
This section is old citing a poll done in 2010. This needs updating. — Preceding unsigned comment added by R0439564 (talk • contribs) 14:19, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Inner six/Outer seven?
The headline photo of the article is a somewhat ominous looking picture labeled "The inner six and the outer seven" No where in the article does it explain what that means or why it has particular meaning to the euroscepticism movement.--Drewder (talk) 00:46, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
 * If you click on the picture and go onto "more details", it's explained. I'm not sure if that double be mentioned in the picture caption; I think that putting the full explanation in the article will take up too much space IMO. – Zumoarirodoka (talk) 11:37, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Recent edits / Discussion section
....have added a lot of detailed material which is very specific about current party positions, and the recent past.. I don't want to revert as it all seems to be sourced, but thus is going to date very quickly and create massive editing tasks quite soon. It's all looking too much like a monthly or yearly digest and not enough like an encyclopedia. Gravuritas (talk) 22:47, 15 November 2015 (UTC) Gravuritas (talk) 22:47, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

The discussion section is a example of current snippets of antiGB-in-Europe-statements without any value or relation to the article. Compare the economic developmenets - while the City of London (less England as a whole) has been better off in the last ten years, this was completely the other way round in the decades before. Polentarion Talk 13:35, 6 December 2015 (UTC)


 * We do not need to state any British party position, including the commies and the Welsh Green on Europe since 1945 here. This is about Euroscepticism, so lets keep it like that. Instead, the post maastricht blues, the decrease of overall support to things European after Maastricht and the failure of the European Constitution in the mid 2000s is much more important. Polentarion Talk 14:14, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Criticism section
Back in 2014 Serten made this comment: "Criticism sections are always bad, I integrated part of them in the main text" (see above). A criticism section has now returned to this article and it needs work. I have marked it for cleanup. Euroscepticism is obviously an opinion, but this section is written in a style which presents Eurosceptic arguments as if they were facts. It would be useful to distinguish between what we can objectively say about the European Union and what we can objectively say about the beliefs of Eurosceptics. Polly Tunnel (talk) 17:00, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

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Needs updating
This article is sorely in need of updating. A lot of it is written in the present tense, but talks about politics and attitudes from before brexit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:8000:8901:F00:EC16:E0B:75E9:E10F (talk) 15:25, 17 February 2022 (UTC)