‘Making your mind up’: Britain, Europe and eurovision-scepticism

This chapter argues that the history of Britain’s ambivalent involvement in the Eurovision Song Contest is linked to Britain’s ambivalent involvement in the process of European integration from 1961-2016. Early promise and active engagement gave way to a narrative of decline that was both a symptom and a cause of progressive disillusion with and disengagement from Europe. Memories of former greatness prevented an active engagement with both Eurovision and European integration from the 1990s: memories of the defiance of Nazism in 1940 in the case of the EU; and memories of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ in the case of Eurovision. British responses to Eurovision remain trapped between aloofness and an inability to compete successfully.