Public Opinion and Britain's Relationship with Europe

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Although they differ in their readiness to put the issue before voters, all of Britain's political parties now take the view that there should not be any significant change in the UK's relationship with the EU without the consent of voters as expressed in a referendum. As a result, no attempt to provide impartial evidence on the future of that relationship can be complete without taking public opinion into account. However, systematic impartial evidence can be difficult to ascertain both because the evidence itself is scattered across a disparate variety of sources and because protagonists in the debate prefer to promote the evidence of support for their views rather than a balanced account.This proposal is for a set of knowledge exchange activities designed to overcome these obstacles, together with some academic writing and research that will help fill some of the gaps in the relevant knowledge base. In particular, we propose, (i) the development of a website facility that brings the existing survey and polling evidence on attitudes towards Britain's relationship with Europe into one place, accompanied by independent commentary, (ii) the provision of a set of briefing papers on specific topics, supplemented by oral presentations to those with a close professional interest in the subject, and (iii) the submission of two articles to academic journals, facilitated in part by the collection of new survey data.The website facility would bring together (i) all the key readings on public attitudes to Europe provided by commercial polling companies since 2010, and (ii) the key UK data from long running major academic and governmental surveys, (iii) access to key EU-wide attitudes where these are systematically available from cross-national sources for the period since 2004. The database would contain key methodological details for each poll/question and use the latest data visualisation and graphical facilities to make the statistical material as accessible as possible. In addition the website facility would provide a regular commentary (blog) on various aspects of public attitudes towards the EU. The writing of a blog would be initiated either (i) the release of a new output by the project itself (ii) on the occasion of events and media stories to which public opinion is pertinent, or (iii) the publication of new polling/survey evidence. The commentaries would be supplied principally by the applicant but guest blogs would also be sought from those with relevant expertise. The facility would also provide a bibliography of relevant literature.The briefing papers, of which at least six would be produced, will provide an introduction to the evidence on a particular topic. Attractively designed and written in an accessible style, they would be aimed at the non-academic professional and interested lay public. Presentations based on the findings of the briefings would be made at two off the record seminars held near SW1 and aimed at policy makers with a close professional interest in the subject. One or more similar seminars will also be offered to UK government officials.The academic articles would focus on (i) the extent to which instrumental evaluations and cultural concerns interact with each other in shaping attitudes towards the EU in the UK and in so doing have helped created a social division between 'winners ' and 'losers', and (ii) the degree to which attitudes towards the EU may be contingent on party stances and on potential changes to the rules and competences of the EU. The latter of these two pieces of work in particular would be facilitated by the inclusion of a module of 20 questions on the 2015 British Social Attitudes survey, the fieldwork for which would begin shortly after the 2015 general election.This new data collection will extend one of the longest running time series on the subject as well as cover topics, such as attitudes to changing the competences of the EU, hitherto little addressed.