Britain in Europe: neither in nor out

Over the past twenty years, a dangerous experiment has been carried out in the United Kingdom. There has been a futile attempt to combine formal British membership of the European Union with detachment from its main policies, such as the single currency and the Schengen area. This has involved a grudging political acceptance by the British political classes of the rational need for Britain to be part of the Union, offset by ever deeper popular hostility to the Union and everything it stands for. The motives which led to this strange combination of attitudes were various. Lazy and cowardly politicians were able to emphasise, as it served their case, the pro-European or the anti-European side of the argument in their rhetoric and party programmes. A certain tenuous unity within the main political parties could apparently be maintained by this systematic split-personality approach. Some at least of those who acquiesced in it privately believed that when the ambiguities inherent in Britain’s tortured relationship with the European Union were finally resolved, it would be to their advantage.