THE move to the EU exit door is gathering pace.
From what one hears and reads, doubts about membership are now mainstream.
In a major reversal, a Survation poll in September showed that 51 per cent of Britons would vote for ‘Brexit’.
A proliferation of anti-EU organisations includes Leave.EU, an umbrella group of campaigners, while Conservatives for Britain is led by former Chancellor, Nigel Lawson.
And while we await the results of Mr Cameron’s renegotiations, events are placing a sharper focus on our differences.
The Greek bailouts have made a mockery of the Eurozone; Poland no longer wants to join; the migrant crisis has left Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania and in particular, Hungary, deeply unhappy at the mandatory quotas of refugees imposed upon them; and, although this doesn’t affect the UK, immigration remains high on the list of voters’ concerns.
Currently, 250,000 EU citizens arrive in the UK annually, with rights to work, housing, schools, welfare and healthcare.
However, this week the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that tighter curbs on benefits for EU migrants are legal, in order to protect the British taxpayer from welfare tourism.
This will help the Prime Minister’s negotiations, as will a new ECJ ruling supporting his refusal to allow prisoners the vote.
It’s possible that the EU might allow even more concessions under duress.
However, I believe ‘ever closer union’ will never compensate for our loss of national sovereignty.
Meanwhile, as the euro crisis lingers on, our trade exports to the rest of the world rise, as our exports to the EU fall.
As I’ve said all along, this experiment was always doomed to fail.
Anyway, it’s you who will have the final say in a referendum, and I hope by then the choice is even clearer.
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