“Withdrawing from the EU can no longer be dismissed as unthinkable. It is no longer a marginal view confined to mavericks, but a legitimate point that is starting to go mainstream,” Douglas Carswell, a legislator with Cameron’s Conservative Party, told Parliament as it debated the idea of leaving the EU.
This Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011 file photo shows Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron leaving Downing Street in London, to attend the weekly Prime Ministers Questions in Parliament. Goodbye Britain?
For the European Union, a once-unthinkable question is looking more like a real possibility with each new grinding week of economic crisis. The reason is that bad times are forcing the 17 EU nations that use the euro currency to move ever closer toward some kind of United States of Europe — one that could make decisions about how much member countries spend and how much tax they collect.
If ever Britain had a nightmare, that’s it.
The British public shows no interest in moving closer to the rest of Europe, and most can’t even seem to stomach the status quo. The real question these days appears to be whether to drift away or break away abruptly.
After a 2015 election, Britain — among 10 of the 27 EU nations that don’t use the euro — is likely to hold a referendum on whether to leave the EU. Even if it doesn’t hold a vote, the country is already unpicking its ties with Europe, a movement that has unsettled Germany, which is eager to retain the U.K. as an important economic driver of the bloc.
“I will ask the inhabitants of the wonderful island to reflect that they will not be happy if they are alone in this world,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a speech before visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron last week in London.
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