The Blue Map of Europe: Conservative Parliamentarians and European Integration

This article uses the results of the authors’ 1994 ESRC survey of Conservative MPs, MEPs and candidates in the European Parliament election to measure the extent of Conservative divisions over European integration in relation to a range of policy issues. It discusses whether the party’s European parliamentarians are becoming more Euro-sceptical, whether Thatcher’s cohorts of new MPs are more sceptical than their predecessors, and how sceptical John Major’s backbenchers really are. The problem of party management is demonstrated by the size of minorities on both wings of the European debate, and the centrality and divisiveness of the issue of national sovereignty is illustrated.