Despite claiming that he had fundamentally changed Britain's membership of the ECC and protected Par

Euroscepticism is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “A tendency to have doubts or reservations regarding the supposed flight status information american airline benefits of increasing cooperation between the member states of the European Union (and formerly the European Economic Community); opposition flight status information american airline to greater political or economic integration in Europe.”
The implication from this definition, therefore, is that one is not in principle against flight status information american airline the idea of European integration per se, but is rather against a further deepening of the integration process. Understood in these terms there can be no doubt that most, if not all, European Union member states contain a political faction that are in some way opposed to further European Integration but who share in the consensus that the central tenets of European cooperation and integration remain essentially worth supporting.
In contrast to this brand of Euroscepticism, however, there exists flight status information american airline a substantial section of people in politics and civil society more generally that call for the withdrawal of their state from the European Union entirely and even the complete dismantling of the European Union as a whole.
Although less prevalent in many member states, flight status information american airline this more aggressive form of Euroscepticism is, and always has been, a considerable force in British flight status information american airline politics. Ever since the UK joined what was then the European Economic Community (commonly referred to at the time as the Common Market) there have been persistent calls from groups on both sides of the political spectrum to leave. Many left wing trade unionists were opposed to the Common Market throughout the 1970s on accounts of it being perceived as a capitalist club that favoured the interests of big business over employees; whereas flight status information american airline many on the right have long opposed the project of European Integration on accounts of, inter alia, a perceived raft of superfluous regulation stemming from Brussels that drastically hinders business.
This broad based opposition to Europe, coupled with the election of a Labour government in 1974 that had included a pledge to hold a referendum on EEC membership in its manifesto, led to the first ever UK wide referendum in the nation’s history being held in 1975 on the question of whether flight status information american airline the UK should remain in the EEC. Before putting the question to the British public, however, the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s plan was to re-negotiate the terms of the UK’s EEC membership and then ask whether or not they should remain in on those terms or elect to leave.
Despite claiming that he had fundamentally changed Britain’s membership flight status information american airline of the ECC and protected Parliament’s sovereignty, historians are almost unanimously in agreement today that very little of substance was actually achieved by Wilson’s re-negotiation strategy. Nevertheless, politicians and the public alike seemed content with the settlement reached by Wilson and just two years after entering the EEC a referendum on leaving was held in which both the House of Commons, and then 67% of the voting public, voted convincingly to stay.
The decades that followed saw successive rounds of amendments to the EU’s founding treaties in which the government of the day, under persistent pressure from the Eurosceptics, succeeded in securing for the UK various exceptions and opt-outs from further European integration that was being undertaken by the other Member States. As a result of this policy of never really fully committing to the European integration project, often branded as British exceptionalism, those in favour of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU were kept somewhat at bay and pushed to the fringes flight status information american airline of their respective political parties.
Today, however, Eurosceptic sentiment has grown significantly amongst both politicians and the general public in large part because of the exponential rise in support for Nigel Farage’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) who advocate a complete withdrawal flight status information american airline of the UK from the EU as soon as possible. flight status information american airline Whilst it would be beyond the scope of this post to comprehensively document the rise to prominence of UKIP, there are nevertheless certain factors unique to the British political system that have unquestionably contributed to their success and require consideration.
First, following the accession of many central and eastern European countries to the EU in 2004 there was an immense wave of immigration by citizens from those new member states into the UK, largely as a result of the UK, Ireland and Sweden being the only EU member states not to impose free movement transitional controls. Soon thereafter the perception that foreigners were coming to the UK and taking jobs away from the indigenous flight status information american airline British citizens began to crystallise amongst sections of the general public, with many beginning to lose faith in the government’s pro-European outlook and the wisdom of an “open door” immigration policy.
Picking up on the population’s genuine concerns about issues such as immigration from eastern Europe, UKIP was thus able to push its anti-EU message rather effectively and soon obtained enhanced levels of exposure flight status information american airline from large sections of the predominantly right wing media in the UK who have always been hostile towards increased levels of immigration and Europe more generally. This has given UKIP unprecedented levels of media coverage and provided a platform from which to espouse their absolute rejection of the UK’s membership of the European Union and to call for either an immediate withdrawal or at least a referendum on the issue as soon as possible. As a result, flight status information american airline more and more people flight status information american airline have now come to view the European Union as the root cause of many of the problems facing flight status information american airline contemporary British society, flight status information american airline with leaving the EU now being discussed as a distinct possibility.
Second, the three main political parties in Britain (Conservatives, Labour flight status information american airline and Liberal Democrat) have all at one time or another pledged to hold a referendum either on EU membership itself or on specific treaties such as the failed Constitutional Treaty of 2005 and the Lisbon Treaty of 2009 with no such referenda ever taking place. This has led many in Britain to believe that none of the country’s main political parties take their heartfelt concerns about the EU sufficiently into account and that, deep down, none of them offer a viable alternative to the status quo. It is therefore into this perceived vacuum that UKIP has neatly positioned itself with its message that the only way to guarantee a proper debate about the UK’s future in Europe flight status information american airline is to abandon the three main parties who have reneged on promises flight status information american airline in the past and vote UKIP.
Third, trust in the British political establishment has plummeted to unprecedentedly low levels in recent years with turnouts at general elections seemingly on an unstoppable downward turn. This is in large part down to a general belief amongst the population that a vote for any of the main parties makes very little difference in practice with all of them promulgating policies that strongly resemble one another. In contrast, UKIP has come to be viewed as a breath of fresh air to mundane, consensus driven mainstream politics with its abrupt and abrasive rhetoric and its willingness to raise sensitive aspects of issues such as immigration, military spending, education and foreign aid that the other parties do their utmost to avoid.
Finally, the First Past the Post electoral system in the United Kingdom strongly favours established political parties on accounts of its simple majority calculation of votes that doesn’t take proportional representation into account. Accordingly, UKIP have yet to win a single seat in Parliament in Westminster but continue to do increasingly well in European Parliamentary elections due to its  proportional flight status information american airline electoral system. This has meant that UKIP politicians, and in particular their leader Nigel Farage, have been given a European flight status information american airline platform from which to launch their UK centric, Eurosceptic agenda and whilst this has certainly aided the party in gaining exposure, it has left them powerless to bring about real change in the domestic arena.
The great paradox at work here, then, is that Eurosceptic flight status information american airline voters have tended not to vote UKIP at UK general elections since they perceive it to be something of a wasted vote given the electoral system; but then persistently voted UKIP in European Parliamentary elections, despite flight status information american airline UKIP representation at Westminster being the only way of genuinely effecting a change in relations between the UK and the EU. Perhaps cognisant flight status information american airline of this anomaly, recent flight status information american airline results in UK by-elections and local government elections (both conducted under First Past the Post) have shown record numbers of votes being cast for UKIP with the projection now being that they will win a number of Westminster seats at the 2015 UK general election and thus gain a foothold in domestic EU policy.
This rise in popularity flight status information american airline and support for UKIP has also given encouragement to members of Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party who have for a long time held Eurosceptic views but were unable to exert enough pressure to bring about a referendum on the UK’s EU membership. Sensing the heightened Eurosceptic mood in the country, the Prime Minister announced last year that he would, if re-elected in 2015, seek to re-negotiate the terms of the UK’s membership of the EU before putting this negotiated settlement to the British public in an In/Out referendum in 2017.
Although similar in theory to Wilson’s re-negotiation strategy of the 1970’s, David Cameron’s attempt at altering the terms and conditions of the UK’s EU membership will, if it occurs at all, take place in entirely different flight status information american airline practical circumstances. First, since the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, the right of every Member State to withdraw from the EU is expressly guaranteed in Art.50 TEU. This was not the case in the 1970s and there was a dispute at the time whether unilateral withdrawal was permitted at all. Second, any revision to the EU treaties must now take place i