The European British community seems largely divided over its choice regarding remaining in the European Union or leaving this decades old partnership.

Though a final word about it, will come once Britain undergoes a test of the public verdict through a referendum, that is likely to be held in June,as UK’s premier David Cameron has promised to hold it.

One key message from the opinion polls in advance of the conclusion of David Cameron’s renegotiation of the UK’s terms of membership was that if the Prime Minister came back from Brussels with what he insisted was a good deal for Britain, then the public would swing in behind a Remain vote. YouGov, for example, consistently found that a clear majority said they would vote to Remain in the EU in those circumstances, even though that was far from being the position when the same respondents were simply asked how they would vote in a EU referendum now. Conservative supporters, in particular, seemed especially inclined to be willing to change their minds on the basis of a recommendation from David Cameron.

The plausible free market argument

There would be a jobs boom as firms are freed from EU regulations and red tape with small-and medium-sized companies who don’t trade with the EU benefiting the most. In its recent paper, the EU Jobs Myth, the free market Institute for Economic Affairs seeks to debunk the claim that 3-4 million jobs would be lost if Britain left. “Jobs are associated with trade, not membership of a political union, and there is little evidence to suggest that trade would substantially fall between British businesses and European consumers in the event the UK was outside the EU,” it argues. “The UK labour market is incredibly dynamic, and would adapt quickly to changed relationships with the EU.”

EU:Cameron’s centripetalism versus Boris Johnson’s centrifugalism

The Conservative truce over the European Union referendum on Monday collapsed as the Prime Minister attacked Boris Johnson,the mayor of London and Cabinet ministers openly criticised one another, write Peter Dominiczak and Christopher Hope of the Telegraph.

In a sign of the deepening divisions over the in-out referendum, David Cameron used a Commons appearance to openly condemn Mr Johnson, who on Sunday announced that he would campaign to take Britain of the EU.

Mr Cameron suggested that Mr Johnson made his decision simply in order to further his own ambition to become prime minister.

He also described as “for the birds” an apparent suggestion by Mr Johnson that Britain could vote to leave the EU before negotiating a better settlement with Brussels.

The Prime Minister is said to be “livid” with Mr Johnson, who on Monday indicated that Mr Cameron and his allies are “wildly exaggerating” when they claim that a “Brexit” would be a “leap in the dark”.

Eurosceptics versus Europhiles

The arguments on either side are clear. If you’re a Eurosceptic, the impositions of European Union bureaucracy are daily infuriations, with Britain supposedly ceding control to Brussels of immigration policy, of its legal system, of its famously curved cucumbers. Britain contributes a small fortune to the European Union budget each year (somewhere between £8bn and £20bn, depending on whom you believe) and that’s after the hard-won common agricultural policy rebate secured by Margaret Thatcher in 1984(when Britain was the second poorest of the EEC members).

Anti-European feeling, stoked by an aggressively Eurosceptic press (or “Europhobic”, as Peter Mandelson called them), sees British secession from the EU as opening up new vistas of global economic co-operation and integration, while slamming the door on the legions of impecunious eastern European migrants coming to scrounge off the welfare state.

Mark Reckless, the Ukip MP who defected from the Tories because of what he saw as a soft line on Europe, told us: “Many of those who are now saying that Brexit would be a terrible thing for the country were the same people who were arguing very strongly that we should join the euro.

The obvious failure of the euro combined with the remarkable growth of emerging markets outside Europe and the relative success of the United States when compared with Europe – all of these are major factors which make it very difficult for people to argue to stay in the EU, and will make people feel that it’s much better for them economically to leave.” Supporters of Brexit argue that EU countries have every incentive keep trading with the UK, which is a large importer of goods and services.

But there is uncertainty over what would happen if the UK leaves and has to develop new trade agreements with the rest of Europe.

There are also pro-European concerns that foreign companies would be less likely to invest in Britain, and could move their headquarters, if it no longer has access to the single market.

Investor Neil Woodford, the founder of Woodford Investment Management, described pro-European claims that the economy would be damaged as “bogus”.

“I think it’s a nil-sum game frankly, whether we stay or whether we leave,” Mr Woodford said.

Remain campaigners say: Millions of jobs would be lost as global manufacturers moved to lower-cost EU countries. Britain’s large, foreign-owned car industry would be particularly at risk. “The attractiveness of the UK as a place to invest and do automotive business is clearly underpinned by the UK’s influential membership of the EU,” said a KPMG report on the car industry. The financial services sector, which employs about 2.1 million people in the UK, also has concerns about a British exit. “The success of the UK financial services industry is to a large extent built on EU Internal Market legislation. To abandon this for some untried, unknown and unpredictable alternative would carry very significant risks,” said global law firm Clifford Chance in a report by think tank TheCityUK..

What the European leaders think

Cameron and his team appeared to have been caught off guard by a fierce backlash from eastern European countries over his plans to curb benefits for EU migrants.

Beata Szydło, the Polish prime minister, and the leaders of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia – a group known as the Visegrad – were infuriated by plans to reduce the amount of child benefit that migrants working in the UK can send back home.

They said that the curbs should only apply to new arrivals in Britain – a concession which Mr Cameron refused to make because it would mean up to 16 years to phase in.

A diplomat said the obstruction was a “rigid, predetermined position”.

Tomas Prouza, the Czech Europe minister, goaded British diplomats on Twitter with pictures of the Visegrad’s “war room” of negotiators.

“As the time passes, I am more and more perplexed by the British approach of non-negotiation. Quite unorthodox, to say the least,” he wrote.

“Not looking forward to cold British breakfast served seven hours late.”

Meanwhile, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor who is wary of dominating Europe, refused to intervene and went for a bag for Brussels’ famous frites at the nearby Place Jourdan.

is Cameron’s most problematic figure. He doesn’t want Britain to leave, but he will be intensely reluctant to help Cameron’s Yes campaign by making concessions.

Hollande is France’s least popular president in decades. By the spring of 2017, when the UK referendum campaign will probably be at fever pitch, he will be fighting for a second term.

The French will resist any suggestion of reopening EU treaties to accommodate Britain, making it more difficult for George Osborne to settle the big question of the relationship between the 19 countries in the euro and those, like Britain, outside. In longer term, this is probably the biggest issue in the negotiations. But reopening the treaties could trigger a referendum in France, something Hollande was traumatised by a decade ago, when he led the Yes side in a referendum that rejected a European constitution. Hollande wants Britain to stay, not least because Brexit would be a triumph for Front National leader Marine Le Pen.

As on most big issues hobbling the EU, there will at some stage probably be an attempt by Berlin and Paris to agree a joint compromise position that becomes the basis for a deal.

The French were the first to go public in seeking to pin Cameron down. The day before Hollande went to Chequers, the Elysée Palace let it be known it wanted to see a “10-page” list of British requirements.

The smaller EU states of Scandinavia and northern Europe are a mixed bag with their own idiosyncrasies, although each is very keen to keep Britain in, and most are sympathetic to Cameron’s agenda.

Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands increasingly veer towards UK-style Euroscepticism, albeit in different ways, while Belgium is more critical of the British. As the home of the EU institutions, Belgium is broadly federalist on Europe, although it struggles to keep its own national federation functional.

The Cameron rationale of regaining UK’s position

The rationale behind Cameron’s position is that some of the actions that the Eurozone might take to enhance the functioning of the euro could have an adverse effect on the single market. The latter is about ensuring the free movement of goods, services, labour and capital. The UK concern is that actions to shore-up the ‘monetary’ in economic and monetary union (EMU) could lead to conflicts if they erect new barriers to these four freedoms. However, this analysis neglects the fact that the ‘economic’ in EMU is about much more than the single market.

An economic union implies the building up of common policies and economic institutions. The emerging banking union, for example, entails a common approach to prudential supervision of banks and mechanisms for resolving failing banks, with the latter including a common resolution fund to facilitate the orderly winding-up of failing banks.

A potential extension of banking union will be the establishment of a form of common deposit insurance, more limited than the extensive federal provisions in the United States, but nonetheless implying closer economic integration.

Other directions in which an economic union move could include a collective approach to corporate taxation, something that would allay public concern about the ability of many multi-national companies to play governments off against each other, or measures to integrate labour market policies.

None of these will happen overnight and the appeal to the integrity of the single market will continue to resonate for many other member states, but the UK does need to be aware that the euro cannot be seen purely as about the currency.

It is worth pointing out, too, that while there will be some sympathy with Cameron’s insistence that the non-Euro countries should not be liable for the costs of dealing with Eurozone problems, there will still be occasions when a country requires support from the EU as a whole. This happened with Romania and Hungary during the financial crisis, resulting in EU-28 mechanisms being deployed to assist them financially.

Conclusion

Britain’s involvement in the EU project has always been conditional and pragmatic in character. While the upcoming referendum may be a response to specific EU policies of recent years, it is also in part the culmination of long-term disengagement with processes of European integration.  “Ever since Britain joined the European Union support has been far lower than the equivalent in other EU Member States’’,an estimate fostered by a  European researcher,James Dennison. “British membership of the European Union is based on cost-benefit rationale. For the first forty years, Europe was a source of stability; it did a great job of that.  It institutionalized markets, it institutionalized democracy.

The height of British pro-Europeanism was when it was seen that Europe equals business. However in the last ten years, it has been a great source of instability’’,the researcher added.

It reasonably appears that myriad ‘uncertainties’ surround Brexit. Economic anxiety and lingering political reticence cloud discussion of Britain’s involvement in the wider EU project. The relationships, economics, financial and political, that Britain would adopt with the EU in the event of a Brexit remain wholly ambiguous.