55% of Britons support leaving the EU

A poll finds that there is majority agreement for Britain leaving the EU and maintaining only trade relations. Dan Hannan MEP and Charles Clarke MP discuss the poll with Andrew Neil of BBC1's Daily Politics. After five minutes of the video UKIP leader Nigel Farage discusses the EU.

Comments

[Alan Carcas]

Regularly read Daniel Hannan in the Daily Telegraph but this is the first time I have actually seen him in action. Very,very impressive! So what the hell is he doing in that political backwater Brussels/Strasbourg, when he should be making an intelligent and useful contibution in Westminster?

We don't have that much talent in the Tory party that we can afford to dissipate it in this way.

[Edward Huxley]

Great news, but will our Westminster politicians take any notice? They live in another world.

As I`ve said before, if we are given a choice on our EU membership and the majority want to stay in I`ll accept the decision. All we want is the chance to vote on it. Can we have a referendum? Not likely when it is almost certain that it would be an OUT vote.

[R.Baker]

As is usual, the whole poll of 4 questions and results is not published.
Question 4 was as follows,

4.The British people should decide in a vote before Britain transfers any further power to the European Union.
AGREE 84% DISAGREE 13%.
Whover removed question 4 from the poll results is seen by myself and many others as being an undemocratic Eurofanatic.

[Geoff Middleton]

Doesn't matter what the British people want.
The political class is fully signed up to the EU.
We live in an unrepresentative democracy.
Something better change.

[Edward Huxley]

Alan Carcas, I agree with you about Daniel Hannan and the same applies to Roger Helmer. Unfortunately they would not be popular with Mr. Cameron at Westminster - anyone who says we will be better off out has no chance of a front bench appointment. Like Messrs. Major, Hague and Duncan Smith, David Cameron is determined to stay in the EU. Just like Labour & the LibDems.

[Jim]

It's unfortunate that all of the other Tory MEPs don't share Hannan's and Helmer's views.
I'll vote UKIP until the Tories commit to pulling out of the EU.

[david]

The party should also note that 84% agree that "The British people should decide in a vote before Britain transfers any further power to the European Union." (13% disagree)

[Tory Pier]

Jim,

We also have Geoffrey Van Orden, very much a Eurosceptic and someone who has been key in the Conservatives leaving the EPP.

[Andrew Cadman]

When understanding the huge disconnect between the political class and the electorate, Dan Hannan's point about being 'like Switzerland' is worth studying: Switzerland is happy, peaceful and prosperous. However, when did you last hear of a Swiss politician making his mark in the world?

That's the major problem: our political class knows it would shrink to near nothing if we withdrew from Europe. It not also need a re-evaluation of the so-called (but to my mind mythical) 'special relationship' with the United States, as American politicians have often said that it is only interested in Britain in the context of our membership of the EU to give an Anglo-Saxon counter-weight to the decision-making process.

On the Tory side, many have never really gotten over the loss of Empire and are infected with what I call 'Top Table Syndrome'. I coined this phrase after reading an article by the journalist Brian Walden that recounted a conversation with some big wheels during the negotiations about our entry into Europe in the 1960s. He asked them why we didn't settle for some kind of associate status. They replied indignantly 'Britain has a place at the top tables of the world or it is nothing.' This attitude remains to this day and often stems from the sense of entitlement to leadership that a public school education inculcates in you.

On the Labour side, the EU is seen as a way as advancing the cause of socialism and control: During the Thatcher / Major years Labour gave up on being honest about its objectives with the electorate and instead looked to ways to advance towards Utopia by stealth. The EU is a powerful vehicle for that.

On the purely venal side, of course the EU offers lucrative sinecures for the political class.

Hence we have an entire political class that clings to the EU desperately while the public has grown more and more disillusioned.

The tragedy is that the framework for our prosperity outside the EU is already in place: namely trading relationships with the Anglosphere, the old Commonweath and elsewhere. Whatever the merits of mass immigration, one overlooked advantage is that it has now given us links with virtually every corner of the Earth. I strongly recommend James Bennett's 'The Anglosphere Challenge' to understand how in the communication age, a dense network of international links has been formed based upon individual relationships and shared cultural values. This is built from the bottom up, not top down, and is the true motor behind our present and future prosperity.

In short, we are well placed to become the Hong Kong of Europe, trading freely and flexibly with whoever we choose. The poll shows that this a solution the British public tends to favour. However, it is, of course, a future our political class utterly dreads, because it has no place for them. Unless our political leaders have the courage and self-sacrifice to take the steps required the disconnect between them and the public will continue to grow wider. Sooner or later there will be a reckoning.

[Yet Another Anon]

In short, we are well placed to become the Hong Kong of Europe, trading freely and flexibly with whoever we choose.
Perhaps Singapore or Mexico would be a better example than Hong Kong, who after all were handed over to China.

The UK should leave the EU, but also leave the European Court of Human Rights and European Court of Justice, and scrap The Human Rights Act and bring back Capital Punishment. Until Britain leaves those 3 organisations and makes other changes as well, this country will be continually driven further into what is a system that is rigged in favour of Liberals and against a system that will bear up well in fighting the War on Terror and the War on Crime.

[Anne Palmer]

We were denied a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. If you want to save your Country, then take the only chance you may have to ‘right that wrong’ and use your vote at the next European Parliament Elections to put fear into the hearts of the EU and fear into the hearts of our own British politicians so much so they may change their idea of wanting to remain in the EU to getting out, for they may lose their ‘seat’ in our own General Election. Vote only for a Pro British person commonly known as a "Eurosceptic". Not one "eurosceptic" has ratified one EU Treaty.

That will then release Roger Helmer and Daniel Hannon to stand for our own Parliament where I am sure they will do a wonderful job. Miss this opportunity and there may not be a UK Parliament in the not too distant future if Lisbon comes in.

Or, get labour to withdraw Lisbon and put it to the people but it will have to be done before all 27 Countries have ratified it. Rather that than what may follow.

I do not belong to any Political Party or Organisation.

[Hugh Oxford]

The tragedy is that the framework for our prosperity outside the EU is already in place: namely trading relationships with the Anglosphere, the old Commonweath and elsewhere. Whatever the merits of mass immigration, one overlooked advantage is that it has now given us links with virtually every corner of the Earth.

My sentiments exactly. Why are we saddled to "Old Europe", with its demographic collapse, with its Islamisation, with its crushing polity, with its welfare states and socialist , when we have such a wonderful cultural, economic and demographics links with the Anglosphere.

We get out of the EU urgently and re-establish or reinforce these links or we lose them forever, saddled to a fatuous political project that we neither like nor benefit from.

High time for the British people to have their democratic rights recognised and for us to leave the EU.

(P.S. It's worth checking who, exactly, the BBC asked, and if it included first generation immigrants)

[Rob Peel]

Have alook at this new blog for a good deabte on Europe and what our fututre in it should be

http://what-they-wont-tell-you.blogspot.com/