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# Thin red lines
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/thin-red-lines/
- Published: 2007-09-25T11:09:51.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:37:30.000Z
- Author: openDemocracy Supporters
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:31

**Jon Bright (London,** [**OK**](http://ourkingdom.opendemocracy.net/?ref=opendemocracy.net)**):** You probably spotted the Sun's entertaining [EU referendum call](http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2007440317,00.html?ref=opendemocracy.net) yesterday. Describing the reform treaty as the "greatest threat since WWII", they photoshopped Brown's face onto Winston Churchill's body (mixing their metaphor slightly - surely he should have been Chamberlain?) and swivel round his talismanic V sign, pasting him over this glorious Dad's Army homage (I particularly like the EU president single handedly attacking through Denmark):

The Telegraph have been [running their own campaign](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?grid=F18&petition=europe&view=PETITION&xml=/news/2007/06/25/view25a.xml&%5Frequestid=1279855&ref=opendemocracy.net) for a while now and, as Clive blogged for [dLiberation](http://opendemocracy.net/blog/dliberation/eu%5Fand%5Fthe%5Fmedia?ref=opendemocracy.net) yesterday, these two represent only part of a very Eurosceptic UK media:

...is it possible to have a valid referendum, based on the facts, in a country with such a single-minded media? I did the maths a couple of weeks ago, and this is what I reckoned:

*Of the national daily papers, it’s really only the barely-read (and increasingly unreadable) Guardian (c.311,000 sales per issue) and Independent (c.190,000 sales per issue) who are in favour of the European Union.*

The *Times* (c.595,000) and *Sun* (c.2,916,000) follow their owner Rupert Murdoch’s eurosceptic lead. The *Telegraph* (c.833,000) and *Mail* (c.2,205,000) play to the middle-England, vaguely xenophobic gallery. The *People* (c.667,000) is also instinctively anti-EU in most of its approaches, most of the time. The *Express* (c.735,000) does what the *Mail* does, only with less panache. If you count the similarly unthinking *Star* (c.667,000) and *Sport* (c.93,000) as newspapers, they’re also primarily anti-EU on the rare occasions they bother to mention it.

Then there’s the effectively EU-neutral *Mirror* (c.1,425,000) - which will run anti-EU pieces quite happily, but also take on pro-EU government propaganda just to be different to the *Sun* \- and largely impartial *Financial Times* (c.130,000).

So, daily - according to those [ABC](http://www.abc.org.uk/?ref=opendemocracy.net) figures - that makes 13,055,000 anti-EU newspaper sales and 1,555,000 EU-neutral sales, compared to just 501,000 pro-EU newspaper sales.

With over three times as many readers as the Telegraph, the Sun is positioned to make a significant impact. Meanwhile, as [Direct Democracy](http://www.direct-democracy.co.uk/?ref=opendemocracy.net) report, the SNP have begun to make [their own noises](http://iclanarkshire.icnetwork.co.uk/news/scotland/headlines/tm%5Fheadline=snp-opposes-eu-fisheries-policy&method=full&objectid=19815825&siteid=50144-name%5Fpage.html?ref=opendemocracy.net) over the treaty, in opposition to the entrenchment of the Common Fisheries Policy. Will Brown stick to his red lines now?