When is a big story not a story? When no one (apart from the admirable Toby Helm in last Sunday’s Observer) writes it. But try the scandal of the dead-and-buried EU powers review, commissioned from the House of Lords European Union committee in 2102. It is the first major government-backed attempt to track the “balance of competences” – what Brussels has taken away from us and what remains. The committee examined 32 areas in separate studies. Cost: between £4.5m and £5m. Conclusion: actually the division of competences isn’t remotely onerous overall. David Cameron’s mighty renegotiation mountain now seems more of a molehill.
But curiously HMG decides not to publish a proper record: “Ministers have repeatedly informed us… that the purpose of the review is to ground the debate about the EU on a strong evidence base. This seems an unrealistic aim so long as the public is unaware of the review’s existence.” Lord Boswell, chair of the team, was asked to confirm a pantheon of prejudices. He couldn’t. Much money and time wasted.
This story ropes in our anti-European press as well. For even in the midst of a general election campaign, with Europe top of the Ukip pops, no one apparently wants existing assumptions challenged. And so, alas, it may remain – unless Politico can change all the competences of our news trade.
America’s most ambitious political website and magazine calls Brussels and Washington DC the world’s “two main political and regulatory centres”, as it pounds into Europe this month, hiring more than 40 journalists for the launch on 21 April. “We’re ready to help shake up a European media scene which, in our judgment, is in need of something different.”
They can say that again and again: maybe 32 times over.
• This article was amended on 16 April 2015. An earlier version referred to Lord Boswell as a Tory. He is a non-affiliated member of the House of Lords and not a member of any party.
