Will the pro-Europeans please stand up?

In theory, one of the roles of politicians is to conduct, inform and lead a national debate on the issues of the day. One of those issues, for Britain, is without doubt the future of the European Union and Britain's place within it. Yet our politicians – and perhaps our media too – are largely failing in that task.

For a variety of reasons, in which history, geography, culture and language are intertwined, and which include remnants of a postcolonial self-delusion about British superiority and continental inferiority, many British people are reluctantly and half-heartedly engaged with Europe.

Partly for that reason, too many politicians of all parties find it easier to parrot or appease the views of a few rightwing newspapers, many of whose owners do not pay taxes in this country and regard "Europe" as synonymous with regulations which threaten their interests as owners and rich people. Many members of the public are instinctively more cautious and more pragmatic, not least because they do not trust the press, but they get little lead from politicians.

Silent for too long

The upshot, given plausibility by the extremely serious problems of the eurozone, is a striking collective failure of civil society, particularly in England (not so much in Scotland), to think about the relationship with Europe with anything approaching realism or objectivity.

But foreign observers and the business leaders are making arguments which British politicians and commentators, including serious Tory politicians and commentators, ought to be making too. This country is at risk of allowing itself to be stampeded by the Tory party and the Europhobic press into abandoning its place in Europe. Pro-Europeans should shed their anxieties. Voices that have been silent for too long need to make themselves heard.