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\n Illustration by Michael Villegas \/ Ikon Images<\/p>\n
\n Illustration by Michael Villegas \/ Ikon Images<\/p>\n
Such were the headlines that you\u2019d imagine the EU reset to be the Suez Crisis, Munich Conference and loss of the Thirteen Colonies all rolled into one. \u201cSTARMER\u2019S SURRENDER\u201d howled the Mail in all caps, like a furious text from your dad. \u201cDONE UP LIKE A KIPPER\u201d, agreed the Sun, which knows a good pun about fishing regulations when it sees it. The Telegraph instead used a picture of Starmer greeting Ursula von der Leyen to justify its more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger effort, \u201cKiss goodbye to Brexit\u201d. I\u2019m not going to quote the Express. I just don\u2019t have the word count.<\/p>\n
Not everyone was quite so hysterical. The Guardian led with Starmer\u2019s claim that the deal \u201cputs Britain back on the world stage\u201d, and left suggestions of surrender from little-known opposition leader Kemi Badenoch to the subheading. The FT even flirted with positivity. But browsing the newsstands that morning, you could be forgiven for thinking that the only person who backed the deal \u2013 which would, among other things, make holidaying in Europe a whole lot less annoying \u2013 was Keir Starmer. You\u2019d get the same impression from the BBC.<\/p>\n
One surprising group who might disagree with this rather downbeat assessment were the actual British electorate. According to YouGov, reported a visibly baffled Times<\/a>, there was backing for the deal, including overwhelming support for the youth mobility scheme. <\/p>\n ity scheme that everyone had confidently predicted would be its most controversial element. Another YouGov poll<\/a>, just days earlier, had found that 66% of the public support, and just 14% oppose, a closer relationship with Europe so long as it didn\u2019t involve re-joining the EU, single market or customs union \u2013 pretty close to overwhelming support. Over half (53%) were in favour of undoing Brexit altogether. Remember when newspapers cared about the will of the people? How times change.<\/p>\n The traditional explanation for why newspapers are so out of touch with their readers was that the press don\u2019t merely reflect public opinion but attempt to shape it. Owners and editors have, in every sense, different interests to the general public: it\u2019s not as if the range of press opinion in the 20th century reflected the range of public opinion either. There\u2019s also the problem that reliance on advertising \u2013 an industry inevitably keener on some bits of the public than on others \u2013 has pushed papers in certain directions, too.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s another thing which has kicked in these last few years, which I\u2019m not sure everyone has internalised: the general public and newspaper readers are not the same thing. They never perfectly aligned, of course; but now the group that reads newspapers is a fraction of the public as a whole.<\/p>\n How small a fraction is surprisingly hard to pin down. Claimed national newspaper circulation slid by a third, from around 11 million copies a day in the early 1990s to around 7 million by 2020. Exactly what\u2019s happened since is hard to know, as a bunch of the main papers have since stopped reporting the figures \u2013 but sales of those which still do so have fallen by half. In five years. We can probably assume that those which keep the numbers to themselves don\u2019t do so because sales are surging.<\/p>\n Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only \u00a38.99 per month<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/TNS_master_logo.svg.svg+xml\"){kind=logo}
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