I'll admit its more feeling based that hard factual numbers. But I think if Britain left, the economic uncertainty of that effect and the fact the rest of Europe would hate us even more than they already do and won't be making it easy are big factors.
I'm just not sure any PM would risk a total withdrawal, but option 2 would be hugely popular without any economic risk and is what a Euro Union should be about - ability to trade and work together more easily, but without this one nation state ideal and trying to force everyone into the same euro mould, removing national identity and having the Euro Union and Euro Courts as being above each nations own parliment.

I personally would like to see option 1 if it could be proven to work but option 2 with the EU powers massively cut back would seem easier now.

Fortunately most trading arrangements are not built on hate. And even if they were, would they really hate us more than the Saudi Arabian aristocrats who blew up the WTC? Both sides gain from trade, that's the point of it, really.

Option 2, a devolution of powers, is simply not on the table. The Treaty of Rome very explicitly signs us up for "ever closer union." And sorry Tories, that wasn't something Blair or Brown signed, not even Callaghan, it was signed by Edward Heath in 1973 and accepted in a (skewed) referendum a couple of years later.

Oh you're falling for it.

The main achievement of the EU has been the removal of democratic control from a range of issues, from redistribution of wealth through to the value of an imaginary currency, by way of the right size and shape for duck eggs.

It doesn't matter what policies it comes out with, it's the how and why they come out with them that counts, and the EU comes out with them almost at random because no elected person has any input whatsover.

In reality, there is no overwhelming appetite in the nation for a referendum on Europe - folk have more pressing concerns, and despite what the non-EU-jam-tomorrow 'kippers would tell you, those are concerns that we need to deal with through domestic politics, and whilst there is certainly a lot that needs to be put right with the EU, it isn't the cause of all our woes - it isn't a cause of as much as 2% of our woes. There are more immediate things we need to sort out for ourselves.

The Eurozone members who are structurally at the crappy end of the Euro stick - and, in the final analysis, that may be all of them - have far more to complain about.

Hell, there isn't even an overwhelming appetite here on PH for the EU Referendum question - look at the response vs. the 'Snap Election' poll - by my reckoning, there were 250 or so 'kippers who expressed the preference in that poll, but in this one less than 2/3rds of the 'kippers can be arsed voting?

Try to understand. The EU really isn't the reason this country is as screwed up as it is. We did it to ourselves, through leftist governments and our national predilection for pettifogging bureaucracy. We didn't need any help from the EU with that - it might have provided top-cover for our national tape-worm of jobsworth non-jobs, but outside of the EU they would just find some other source of miasmatic legislation to latch onto.

While I agree that there is a massive democratic deficit at the heart of the EU, that is not an issue which is partisan in a left:right wing way, and so irrelevant to the question of why euroscepticism tends to be a trait of the right rather than the left.

I think it's to do with the way we are governed in a broader sense. Many people of the right are sick of "government" being about huge, faceless bureaucratic organisations - be they quangos, regional development agencies or trans-national bodies. The left aren't so concerned about this because they fundamentally support the notion that the state knows best, and the state is better at spending our money than we are, be it locally, nationally or globally.

eharding
There's always more pressing things to think about. It was probably the same when Magna Carta was signed, "it's not going to help me get a better price for my grain, is it?"

The point about leaving the EU to me is two-fold. Firstly it puts us in a stronger position to do something about both the more tangible things and the more abstract things. A simple act of parliament passed by elected MPs could scrap reams of legislation and regulation brought in over the last few years, that is required by the EU, and could similarly close whole organisations and empires that have sprung up, such as regional development agencies, quickly and easily.

Secondly, and maybe more importantly, it's the symbolism of it. I would hope that leaving the EU would be the start of an avalanche of changes in the way we are governed, that would result ultimately in a more open, more competent and much smaller government. It would be the dismantling of the cosy consensus which has built up in this country. The first jet of water from the creaking dam that would spark a series of changes, both here and across Europe and the developed world.

Rumpy, Frumpy (Ashton) and bLIAR, 3 people and positions the world can do without!

This seems to be a recurring theme. The strongest argument for the EU is that no-one is really interested in it anyway.