Are the British Really Euro Skeptics?

Now we’ve all had a chance to reflect on UKIP’s local election triumphs, it seems the one thing that commentators across the board have been able to agree on is that Farage's success reflects an elevated wave of euroscepticism among the British population. What to do about EU membership has, as a direct consequence, become one of the most important debates in modern politics, one that has caused no end of confusion in Tory ranks. But it is a debate that has unfortunately been hijacked by those who label vast swathes of the UK population as staunchly eurosceptic without sufficient cause. In fact, the evidence at hand can’t do justice to how europhobic politicians seem to think the public is, nor to the privileged position they give the issue of Europe in explaining electoral trends.