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This paper examines the principal rhetorical strategies used by the architects of New Labour?s European policy to counter the popular appeal of Euroscepticism in Britain since 1997, concentrating on speeches made about Europe by Tony Blair, Robin Cook, Jack Straw and Gordon Brown. The first and most common approach is to highlight how Britain is missing opportunities in Europe by staying out of schemes for closer integration, such as the euro. The second approach is to emphasise how British society, culture and values have always been intertwined with those of other key European nation states. The paper argues that both strategies seek to rewrite British history for the public, but do so in a way that neglects the influence the British national story has over the public through its presentation on television, in the print media and, crucially, in national curricula for history education. Playing the Eurosceptics at the history game, the paper argues, is unlikely to be a decisive method of convincing the notoriously sceptical British public to vote to ratify either the EU constitution or, later, to agree to British membership of the eurozone. Through this analysis, the paper sheds important light firstly on the failure of the European lobbies in Britain since 1945 to sell the ?European? message to the British public, secondly on the half-hearted efforts by the Blair governments to sell the idea of a European future for Britain to the country, and thirdly on the ways in which European affairs continue in Britain to be written into the British national story. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]