EU exit is no longer taboo topic in Britain

Philip Whyte, from the CER, agrees that the British "never really signed up to the political dimension of the EU, the stuff about developing the foreign policy dimension or the single currency". He traces a key reason for the growth in euroscepticism to the enlargement of the bloc towards eastern and central Europe in 2004.

After an estimated one million new EU passport holders flooded into Britain in the space of a few years, "EU membership was associated with the loss of control at the UK borders," said Whyte. ...

Philip Whyte believes an in-out referendum on British membership could be held around 2017, two years after the next general election. "If a referendum was held tomorrow, it seems that the British would vote to leave," he said.