Denis MacShane, the Europe minister, tells today's Times that the government's biggest problem in persuading the public to see the benefits of Europe is "the national press".

"In Britain hostility to the EU is established orthodoxy and I don't know how you overcome that. When the media dislikes something so much, it is difficult to change that mentality," he says.

"A hate campaign against Europe is being led by some of the same newspapers who wanted to leave Poland in the lurch before the last war.

"The Daily Mail is returning to its isolationist vomit of the 1930s."