Peter Wilding, director of British Influence, says pro-EU campaign must focus on hope rather than fear in runup to UK referendum on membership

Economic arguments alone will not be enough to persuade British voters that the country should stay in the European Union, a leading figure in the fledgling pro-EU campaign has warned.

Peter Wilding, director of the lobby group British Influence, said economic arguments were increasingly dismissed as scaremongering and that the case for EU membership had to be part of a “far bigger story” about Britain’s future.

“We have to go beyond the economic,” Wilding said in an interview. “The message has to be that Britain is a leader in Europe and must get stuck in. Complete the single market, create jobs for our children and grandchildren. It’s about emotion – people are proud of their country, they want it to do well – and hope for the future, not fear.”

British Influence and two other leading pro-European groups, Business for New Europe and the European Movement, are working together to keep Britain in a reformed EU before the membership referendum promised by David Cameron by 2017.

Cameron already has what he wants. That’s the great hidden story in all of this Peter Wilding, director of British Influence

Wilding said that although polls had swung steadily over the past couple of years from “the largest gap in favour of leaving, to the largest gap in favour of staying”, the country was still divided in three: solidly pro-EU, definitely anti and undecided.

“The battle will be won or lost in the middle,” he said, “and it won’t be an easy one. The out camp has developed an attractive narrative – here we are, shackled to a corpse, and we’d be better off out. I wouldn’t presume to be confident of the result of this vote.”

Observers also point out that EU fatigue – witness last year’s European elections – is, broadly, on the rise; that recent EU referendums on the continent have invariably resulted in no votes; and that Britain, alone among major EU member states, boasts both a largely anti-EU (or at least, highly critical) press and a partly Europhobic governing elite.

But there are factors that could play in the yes camp’s favour. Recent polling for British Influence shows anxiety about a possible breakup of the UK may be important: “One in five people say they’ll change their no [anti-EU] vote to a yes if Britain’s exit from the EU also means Scotland leaving the UK,” Wilding said.

Cameron has said this will be his last term as prime minister, and Wilding believes he will see his legacy as keeping the union together, and keeping Britain in Europe. He is further encouraged by the fact that “the highly pragmatic” George Osborne will be leading the government’s renegotiation of Britain’s EU ties.

Crucially, Wilding believes Cameron should not have much difficulty claiming at least a measure of success in his attempt to redefine Britain’s relationship with Brussels and other EU capitals.

Brexit – what would happen if Britain left the EU? Read more

“In fact, he already has what he wants,” he said. “That’s the great hidden story in all of this.”

Much of what the prime minister demanded in his landmark Bloomberg speech on Europe in January 2013 – completion of the single market, free trade deals, more subsidiarity, less red tape – was, Wilding points out, incorporated in both the European Council of Ministers’ strategy agenda last June and in the commission’s manifesto this year.

Tighter welfare rules announced in the Tory manifesto in an attempt to limit EU migration have been broadly approved by countries such as Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands.

And the government’s determination to reject the dread term “ever closer union” referred to in the treaty of Rome can readily be addressed in the form of a special protocol similar to those obtained – on different issues – by the Danes and the Irish.

It won’t be enough for the Eurosceptics on the Conservative backbenches, Wilding predicted. “But will it be enough for the public? If Cameron focuses on the bigger, the positive story, if he doesn’t get boxed into a row about the small print of renegotiation, which is where the ‘outers’ would like to fight him … Well, it might be.”

