Poll shows half of Brits would vote to leave the EU

The EU was the creation of France to control Germany and Europe with German industrialization and French foreign policy. It has turned out to be a Leviathan controlled by Germany which all the people of Europe would do well to destroy to prevent themselves being ruled by Germany. Germany is getting through the EU what it didn't get through two world wars. German Lebensraum and control of Europe and beyond.

The European people need to rise up, reclaim their freedom and destroy the EU-German Leviathan and its dictators and Quislings in every member ocuntry.

In the 1975 last referendum on staying in the EU, each opinion poll in Britain also suggested the result would be "no", and none predicted membership to be approved (though it eventually was by a clear 67% of british voters).
It seems the British (when asked over the phone) may fancy appearing fussy - choosy and complain endlessly about Europe, they perfectly know, at the end of the day, what kind of perspective is actually better for their country/bank-account/mortgages/summer-holidays, and how sterile the eurosceptic position in fact is(nevermind whether they enjoy playing stupid in public, that has nothing to do with what their choice, in the loneliness of a voting booth, will turn-out to be, and which direction they think truely is best for their country to follow).

Yes the British will leave, but Brussels will use everything at thier diposal to stop it. Brussels is full of spindoctors and propaganda specialists, and they cringe at the thought of a democratic process, like a referendum!!
If only the other EU countries had David Camerons backing up the people, he is seen throughout europe as the last democratic hope , and maybe other leaders will see this is the right way to treat thier citizens.
We in europe need the freedom to choose and dont like being led by the nose. Eu politicians are scared and they know the result of a free in or out vote.
Let the people in europe decide in a fair and legitimate referendum .
Cmon its only a referendum , what are the eurofiles scared of?? The truth?

To compare a referendum in 2017 against the one held in 1975 is to ignore several critical factors.

The political nature of the EU is now completely obvious. In 1975 it was categorically denied that membership of the EEC had any political ramifications, it was sold as purely a trade body, hence the name ‘Common Market’.

In 1975, every single newspaper and broadcaster was in favour of a YES vote. Today several papers would back a NO vote, the internet provides a wider range of material and information than was ever the case before. In short the information available is much more evenly balanced than was previously the case.

The 1975 vote was preceded by a ‘re-negotiation’ after which the voters were told that our terms of membership had been significantly altered, this is now seen as a simple fabrication. So if any re-negotiation does occur anyone campaigning for a YES vote will have to counter a heavy dose of public disbelief.

In 1975 the business community campaigned for a YES vote, such uniformity just does not exist today. A goodly proportion of the business community want either to leave the EU or have looser links (59% according to the July 2012 poll held of BCC members). Even the CBI, the most pro EU business body, while it wants to remain inside the EU does not want to join the euro etc. (See comments by John Cridland 23/01/13) It may be difficult for them to campaign affectively for a YES vote when public experience is that EU guarantees do not actually ultimately guarantee anything given the power of the ECJ.

Finally, today we have 40 years of experience of the EU and its directives, as opposed to 2 years. We have seen what it involves.

Ultimately we will have to wait and see what the people say, the opinion polls might give us an idea of how things are moving but they are not really important, other than to show people that they are far from alone in their personal euroscepticism.

Luis - for your information a poll held by YouGov 2012 showed that every region of the UK including Scotland had a majority in favour of leaving the EU. Across all the UK except Scotland the majority in favour of leaving was of the order of 50% v 30%. Interestingly Scotland was very different, the majority in favour of leaving was only 1%, (41% v 40%) so clearly Scotland does have a different perspective even if it is (was in 2012) ever so slightly in favour of leaving.

"In 1975 it was categorically denied that membership of the EEC had any political ramifications, it was sold as purely a trade body"

If British people in 1975 thought the EEC was just a market without "political ramifications", did they also think EFTA (created by the UK 20 years earlier, to compete with the Common Market) was then the kind of federalist and centralised political organisation in Europe, which Britain was abandoning for Brussels' "purely-trade body"? You seem to blame the British people in the 70's (over 67% of the country's voters, as well as a majority in each constituency, except the Shetlands and the Western Isles) for their ignorance, rudimentary knowledge and “inability”, almost, to be responsible citizens (because there was no “Internet”). Do you know long before the web was created (or before Rupert Murdoch bought the Sun, the Times and Co.) there had been a lot of referendums successfully held, without people feeling they had no access to information or freedom of speech, as well as democratic uses and opposition campaigns in the (then-much-more-diverse) British press.

Actually during the campaign in 1975, the Labour Cabinet was split and its members campaigned on each side of the question, a rare breach of Cabinet collective responsibility (with cabinet ministers such as Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Peter Shore and Barbara Castle campaigning for the NO). Most votes in the House of Commons in preparation for the referendum were only carried thanks to opposition support, and the government faced several defeats on technical issues such as election counts. Half of Labour, The Ulster Unionist party, the Scottish National Party, a few conservatives like Enoch Powell and parties outside Parliament including the National Front and the Communist Party of Great Britain as well as unions also then campaigned for the NO. And it seemed pretty clear that they did so because staying in the EC would mean political losses of sovereignty (above a simple trading partnership). The supra-national powers of the Commission were already fully known since the Treaty of Rome (1957) as was the then-federalist agenda of Brussels, which the British press had already been commenting on for over 20 years in various ways.

The simple fact that you always claim to speak in the name of what people want, are going to vote for or even might have “in other circumstances” voted for, as if you could possibly know, tells of your insecurity, actually, toward the outcome of such a process. As if an opinion poll in Scotland showing that at one point last year a 1% majority said they were in favour of leaving the EU, could be of any meaning. If your convictions were solid enough and you really had confidence in their realism, you wouldn’t need to defend them at every turn by claiming it’s shared, as an opinion, by everyone. Your own assessments I suppose would be sufficient, instead trying to prove that the whole of the UK agrees with you. If you wanted the North-Atlantic to enjoy a tropical climate and everyone agreed with you, it still wouldn’t help British weather forecasters much.

I guess I’m also not the only one who is “sceptical” about the UK’s paved-with-gold destiny outside the EU. On the contrary, it must be quite a widespread thought, both in Britain and abroad, to consider that the UK by itself couldn’t possibly become this unique country so unlike the rest of Europe “alone among the rest of the world”. The idea of it or the fantasy of the political fuss it would create, might make some politicians gain votes from time to time, but I doubt it’s ultimately going to make Britain leave the EU (not even going into whether it could actually become this independent country with multiple partners around the world, once outside the EU). Even if the UK eventually did leave, I can only see some cosmetic changes happening in fact, but nothing in the way you seem to imagine, and I bet you’ll still be complaining, (after Britain leaves) about your country’s continuing dependency on the continent (for example arguing that people were lied to in 2015, choosing an exit that was in fact more binding than what they actually thought, as the EU then evolved in a way Britain couldn’t influence, but carried on influencing the UK in return!). Except maybe for a couple of Victorian and Edwardian imperial decades, it has always been the situation of Britain to be dependant politically, economically and culturally, on the Continent’s evolution, whether cooperatively or not.

UK-sceptic - that's complete rubbish,(whoops, I nearly said bollocks}, federalism was absolutely not on the 1975 agenda. I was there, Verhofstadt, Cohn-Bendit and their sort were still in short trousers and trade was the main issue by far. Do you seriously think the British, even more insular in the 70's than now, would have voted yes otherwise?

@Charles_M: Sorry but Spinelli, Monet, Schuman, Albertini, Denis de Rougemont, and many other figures of European federalism in the 50's, 60's and 70's, were much more influent, ambitious and achieving politicians, than their equivalents today, Verhofstadt (an eternal looser who never succeeded in being chosen by member-countries for the Commission, despite his record of attempts) or Cohn-Bendit (whose only feat of arms throughout his carrier are wordy diatribes droned out as president of the green MEP’s group, about 7% of the European parliament).

The intellectual and political movement across Europe for a federal agenda (or simply the treatment of this debate in election campaigns, medias, universities and other political forums) was much more dynamic, enthusiastic and (as a result) powerful in Brussels during the decades following WW2, and most specifically among the then-successful European Christian-democrats. The context of European reconstruction (fear of nationalisms, golden 60’s prosperity, cold war and decolonisation, post-materialist “new-social movements”, Woodstock…), as well as the fact that apart from the UK, the EEC was in 1975 only 6 similar countries/economies, make it obvious that federalism was then much stronger.

Since the 70’s, with the oil crisis, the deindustrialisation and the rise of unemployment in Europe, the integration of 20 more countries of various economic standards, the reunification of Germany and its resulting economic weight, the disappearance of the USSR’s threat, as well as the revival of extremist right-wing movements (in France, Austria, Benelux, Scandinavia, Northern Italy or England, as now Poland, Czech Republic or Hungary…) have completely swept away the perspective of a federal Europe, as it previously used to shape Brussels’ policies and decision-making.

The principle of subsidiary, the fact that Barosso made all his carrier in the Commission, supposedly a central organ, being Paris’ and Berlin’s puppet (as now has also become the European Central Bank in the last few years), not forgetting the increase of the European Council’s and the council of ministers’ influence in treaties’ institutional reforms, the most anti-federalist bodies of the EU (basically a group of strong countries imposing their views, look at how Van Rampuy looks like next to Merkel, Holland and Cameron) are examples of the UE’s evolution which make federalists today look like a bunch of idealist dreamers no one takes seriously. The approach has clearly become inter-governmental.

So if you absolutely want to link the power of federalism in Brussels with the British people’s choice towards staying in the EU (which I wouldn’t do), there should be this time even less people voting for leaving, as federalism is clearly no longer an option that European leaders (even Verhofstadt and Cohn-Bendit) consider seriously for the 21st century. The prevalence of nation-states, especially strong ones, is now a certainty within European decision-making and doesn’t seem ready to disappear (even though the finding of a compromise can still be facilitated). This philosophy of cooperation is very different from the federalist approach which used to design European policies and institutions until the 80’s.

I have no idea how the insular British people (though living in one of the most open trading-economy in the world) make up their mind, but the downfall of European federalism for 30 years is now a historical fact.

I want out: the simple fact that you need to make up that the EU has a federal foreign policy or a supra-national social program, as throughout history, every attempts in this direction have invariably failed and seem even less ready to happen than it may have seemed in the 70’s (when there obviously has always remained as many different diplomacies or types of social systems across the EU, as there are different member-countries), proves that there isn’t much in Brussels today that you really have to complain about concerning federalism (though you might more legitimately have done so in 1975, when European leaders had more than ambiguous speeches or some “manifesto”-book to sell, as federalist outputs in their carrier).

I never said the federal ideal is dead (as you also seem needing to make-up in your contradiction), I said its power in Brussels has significantly decreased the last 30 years, whatever Barosso may say and however busy Cohn-Bendit and Verhofstadt may recently have been, writing a book together. Anyway, Barosso only talks about a "Union", as you probably noticed, and he only refers to federalism as a "federalism of Nations" (which is contradictory). You who’s usually so keen on quotations, if you read Barosso’s predecessors' speeches 30 years ago and earlier, you'll see their contemplation of a federalist future for Europe was much less timid. A “union” of foreign policy and defence (as it already exists for example in NATO) has nothing to do with a federal diplomacy and is far from existing in the EU anyway (look at the French alone in Mali, or how the Iraq war divided the continent). Who on earth is afraid of Baroness Ashton?

What Barosso really talks about, is facilitating national governments compromise on a same position (and especially among the strongest members) as much as they willingly can (who could possibly be against that?). It has nothing to do with abandoning sovereign competences to a federal centralised body, which would impose its will on national governments. Barosso knows very well that this supra-national strategy (once envisaged in Brussels) has long been off the agenda, and that the power in Europe is in Berlin, Paris, London, or Rome, far more than it may once have been in Brussels, Strasburg or Frankfort. Barosso knowns probably better than everyone else how federalism declined, as his longevity in the Comission (unlike his predecessors) is due to his unapologetic taking of orders from European capitals since the beginning (also the reason why Van Rampuy and Mario Draghi were chosen). Isn’the strength of Merkel’s “nein” in the Euro crisis, telling of the weaknesses federalism suffers today in Brussels, compared to the 70’s? I’m afraid you confuse completely what Westerwelle’s “political union” means and what’s federalism.

Back to your previous post: during the referendum campaign in 1975 there were also pamphlets describing the ECC as a KGB back office aimed at destroying NATO, but it surely wasn't either a reason for people to vote for staying in it. Actually in any campaign (whether for a referendum or an election) there is rarely from each of the camps involved, an honest description of the stakes truly at hand (it's part of the game since the Greeks), but democracy ultimately relies on the citizen's choice, provided that he’s fairly educated (as the British people presumably were in the 70’s). If votes had to be reinterpreted every time a campaign had let some "untrue facts" being broadcast among the voters, there wouldn't be many valid votes left. For example the UK should then directly have joined the Euro after Tony Blair's 1997 election campaign then.

You "never claim to speak for anyone but yourself", except that you come up all the time with various opinion polls from different years, sources, and accuracy, to talk about what "we, the people" think (actually always just like you), as well as quotations, which you really seem to have a whole library of, to come and support your arguments.