Europe minister Denis MacShane has rounded on the eurosceptic press for "misleading" the British people over the EU.

MacShane, who is pushing for a Yes vote in next year's referendum on the EU constitution, also admitted there were "major obstacles" to winning the poll.

In an interview with ePolitix.com, he said that the first problem was "an enormous information deficit" caused by debate on Europe being focussed on "a political and ideological subject and not in terms of the facts".

"The second problem, undoubtedly, is that we have a press that is very ideologically engaged with anti-European politics," MacShane added.

"Lord Rothermere and the owners of the other mass circulation papers are determined to weaken Britain's role and influence in Europe but I have much more confidence in the good sense of the British people because this is the same press that tries to influence elections without success.

"I think the British people are much more sensible than the newspaper proprietors."

The Europe minister said the third problem was "the hostility [to the EU] of the present Conservative leadership.

"They are the only mainstream right-wing party in Europe that is so hostile to the European Union and to the treaty; the big question will be how long can this be sustained," he told this website.

"One thing that is clear is that the primitive anti-Europeanism of the Tory Party makes it less and less electable, and if the Conservatives are serious about becoming a major British party again they will have to, as Labour did, change their hostility to the EU and to the treaty."

But MacShane went on to say that the priority for the time being was winning the general election campaign.

"We've got a big poll in the general election where the Tory Party is standing on a UKIP-lite platform," he said.

"Let's see if the British people want to send anti-European Conservative MPs back to parliament, I don't think they will.

"Then we will have the second big poll which will be the referendum in 2006 and what we are discovering is that if you have time to talk to people and explain, their first degree of hostility to the EU, which is based on the myths they read in the majority of the papers, tend to disappear."