Time to leave the EU?

Today’s Lib Dem attack on their coalition partners comes from Chris Huhne, who rails against a “Tea Party tendency” in Conservatives sceptical of the European Union. His premise is that those who are hostile to the EU are a minority. It’s worth digging a little deeper here, because the opposite is true. If you believe that Britain has benefited from EU membership, you’re in a smallish minority – 35 per cent to be precise. Huhne seems genuinely unaware of the depth of feeling out there.

CoffeeHousers may be familiar with opinion polls commissioned by eurosceptic groups. But – as we say in the leading article of this week’s Spectator – the European Commission can hardly be accused of an anti-EU bias. In May, it conducted its latest biannual Eurobarometer poll [, the largest of its type in the world, asking the same questions of the 27 member states. The results show that Euroscepticism is the mainstream view in Britain.