David Cameron meets Nicola Sturgeon for post-election talks May, 2015. Demoted/ Ken Jack. All rights reserved. At one level, the big question for the UK’s future relationship with the European Union is a simple one: will the UK’s citizens vote to remain in or to leave the EU in the upcoming referendum. Yet whichever way the vote goes, there will be potentially critical knock-on political impacts both for the UK’s own political future and for its role and influence in the EU.
It is quite possible that England will vote differently to all three other constituent parts of the UK – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And whether England drags the other parts of the UK out of the EU in a ‘Brexit’ against their will, or whether in contrast a reluctant England is kept in by the other three, political debates will erupt as a result.
Current polls are only a rough guide, with the campaign yet to take off, but they do suggest the vote in England wavering between a ‘stay’ or ‘go’ vote while voters in Scotland and Northern Ireland look strongly in favour of remaining in the EU, and those in Wales also in favour if less strongly so (for a summary of recent polls see NatCen).
