Extra-Parliamentary Eurosceptic Actors in the UK

In a major speech on Britain’s role in Europe on the 23rd of January 2013, Prime Minister David Cameron committed himself and the Tory party to holding a referendum on future British participation in European integration. There had been plentiful media speculation about the announcement and it was billed as a ‘watershed moment’ for Britain’s relations with the EU. In the speech Cameron both praised and criticized the EU (Cameron 2013). His key policy proposal was not an explicit withdrawal but a demand to renegotiate the British relationship with the EU so that it would ‘better reflect the realities of a radically changed EU’ (Cameron 2013). Once British EU membership has been renegotiated then Cameron’s policy calls for a referendum to be held before the end of 2017 to ratify this new relationship. The resultant effect of this policy has been a pronounced drift of the UK away from the EU mainstream. An immediate consequence of Cameron’s action has been that British withdrawal from the EU has become a distinct reality. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.