Friends or enemies? The British press and the European Union

Abstract

As the European Union increases its role and influence in the affairs of the United Kingdom, the British press is reflecting and articulating a sense of opposition felt by some centres of power in the UK. In this context, the press sees the preservation of a strong, ethnocentric sense of national identity among British subjects as an essential shield with which to fend off the ‘Europeanisation’ of Britain. This article analyses and defines the textual limits of a dominant anti-EU construct in the British press; it argues that a constructed sense of ‘British’ national identity, promoted by the press, feeds off a construct of Europe that is fundamentally false and negative. Within this construct, the press is a major conduit and manipulator of anti-European (or at least anti-European unification) discourses. It repeats, reinforces and magnifies these discourses in reports on British trade, economic, and foreign policy in relation to the EU, passing them on to its readership. In the press' model of British-EU relations, the UK's relationship with Germany is central, and a strong anti-German discourse lies at the heart of the press'p anti-Europeanism. In its emphasis on European news from an anti-European perspective, the press maintains this construct within narrow, manageable limits.