Brexit, bent bananas and cleavage regulations: busting the euromyths

Just two weeks to go before Britons can finally stop those Eurocrats in Brussels from dictating how much cleavage barmaids can display when serving customers.

Wait – what?

Discussions over the UK’s membership of the EU and how it affects the British have been crowding the airwaves for years.

And yet, despite the televised debates, the leaflets sent to every British household, the comparisons to Hitler, the warnings or world war and house price crashes and the ubiquity of referendum talk, Britons are still largely misinformed on key issues such as immigration, the economy and democracy, according to a report released today.

Fifteen per cent of Britons buy into at least one “euromyth”, which over the years have created a parallel reality where European bureaucracy imposes rules on cleavages and bans corgis, curved bananas and tourists uploading photos of famous British monuments on social media. According to 6 per cent of the public, for instance, British sausages will indeed have to be renamed “emulsified high-fat offal tubes”.

“We remember vivid stories much more than dry statistics,” explain researchers from UK in a Changing Europe and Ipsos MORI. “Extreme euro-myths like bendy bananas and barmaid cleavages stick much more than figures on investment and trade – it’s not just a media effect, it’s how we’re wired to think.”

That is why the gap between the public’s perception of the EU and how it affects life in the UK is so wide on some deciding factors.

Immigration

EU immigration is overestimated by a factor of three – on average Britons believe EU citizens make up 15 per cent of the total population, the equivalent of 10.5m people. In reality, it’s 5 per cent, or 3.5m people. This is because the public tends to overestimate what they are concerned about, says Ipsos MORI.

Economic impact

At the same time, what Leave campaigners have decried as “Project Fear” does not appear to be working. Although Britons are generally aware of the macroeconomic impact of a vote to leave the EU, only a quarter believe they will be personally affected.

This is a key challenge for those who wish to stay. “Despite the Remain campaign’s focus on us each being £4,300 worse off if we leave, we’re not making the connection or not believing it”, says Bobby Duffy, managing director of Ipsos MORI. “Project fear will be much less effective if we think it’s only happening to someone else.”

On the economy, most (84 per cent) believe the UK is one of the top three contributors to the EU budget, but in reality Germany, France and Italy contribute a larger share. Investment into the UK by the EU is massively underestimated: the public believes less than a third comes from the bloc, but it is actually closer to half.

Democracy

The referendum is also being fought on issues of democratic accountability. Last week a shopkeeper told the prime minister during a live TV debate that not one of his customers could name his local MEP. Ipsos Mori’s survey proves him right – only 5 per cent can do this and, somewhat more worryingly, 18 per cent do not know that MEPs are elected by the citizens of each member state.

More euromyths

By the way, the cleavage regulation is not true. The EU once got so incensed at the number of euromyths peddled by the British media that it set up an alphabetised list of refutations.