Europe - Them or Us: Voice of the People, TV review: 'An enjoyably nostalgic romp'

Europe - Them or Us: Voice of the People, BBC Two; Camping, Sky Atlantic

Nick Robinson at the White Cliffs of Dover (BBC)

Having worked with a few of them in my time, I have nothing but admiration for the BBC's small, plucky, brave army of firm researchers (and, nowadays, those who toil in independent production houses). When the cry rises up from the producers to "raid the archive", there they are, ready to excavate all the film, U-matic tapes, beta cassettes and digital files the programme makers need to stitch together their story. A bulldog breed these toilers in the vaults certainly are.

So it must have been for Alex Cowan when Nick Robinson and Crux Productions decided to go on an enjoyably nostalgic romp through Britain's relationship with Europe. While an awful lot of the tale is wearyingly familiar (and will get still more wearyingly familiar until the great vote on June 23rd), I am a sucker for recycled interviews with Roy Jenkins and the like. Likewise, it is always a joy to see a young (ish) Margaret Thatcher sporting that jersey with all the European flags on it, as she campaigned in her own inimitable way for the European Community in the 1975 referendum, a democratic event that has so many echoes with the debates today. It was nice to see Harold Wilson, who both delievered the referendum and made sure, in a deal with a sympathetic German chancellor, that Britain stayed in, rehabilitated at last. After all, is this not precisely what David Cameron has just done? If Wilson was a useless twofaced party hack with no vision and few beliefs, where does that leave Cameron? Except of course, as Robinson implies in his essay, both were figures who, in reality, had little choice in the matter, for good or ill. Lest it be forgotten, Tony Blair and Nick Clegg also, for their own reasons, offered the voters an “in/out” referendum. Public opinion, most recently witnessed in the rise of Ukip, is too strong to resist it, and having the vote is no bad thing.

I only missed a couple of things in this account. First, the quote that summed up the feeling of many decades ago, during that ‘75 plebiscite, from European Commissioner and Tory grandee Christopher Soames - "this is no time for Britain to be considering leaving a Christmas club, let alone the Common Market". In other words there should have been much more about why, half a century ago, Europe was seen as the answer to Britain’s economic problems, rather than, as now, partly a cause of them. Second I'd have liked to know just how close we came to joining the euro back in 1997, say, when the Tories were utterly crushed and Blair was a sort of sun king who could do whatever he wanted.

I’d also have appreciated learning a bit more about "the issues", a revisiting of the “mission to explain” that seems to have slipped away from the consciousness of current affairs and news producers in recent times. If, like me, you think the EU vote basically comes down to a punt on whether Europe is reformable than I'd like to hear what Blair, Cameron, Clegg, Straw et al think about that (though I wouldn’t necessarily believe them). So: if you think Europe's economy can return to job creation and growth then the case for the UK staying in is obvious. If you think that - in another echo of 1975 - Britain is being shackled to the sick man of the global economy, then the rational thing is to get out and build markets elsewhere. Especially if the European Christmas club has just gone bust.

All of which just leaves me sufficient space to urge you to find a way to watch Camping on Sky Atlantic, which I reviewed and previewed before. Not for years has there been such a brilliant work of morbidly compelling comedy on our screens. Not very European, though.